Monday, May 7, 2007
The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don’t play together, the club won’t be worth a dime. — Babe Ruth
Babe Ruth has one heck of an obvious, but logical point. This previous weekend, April 27 through 29, the intramural softball men’s, women’s and co-ed tournaments took place. The team I was part of played in the co-ed league, a league that saw game after game forfeited because of teammates not showing up.
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I’m a member of a team, and I rely on the team, I defer to it and sacrifice for it, because the team, not the individual.
As Babe Ruth said, several “clubs” weren’t “worth a dime” because teammates couldn’t figure out that others were depending on them.
Yes, challenges were certainly in place to overcome. Throughout the league’s season, teams were signed up to play on specific nights and at specific times so that team members could make their play times work for them. However, every team was required to be able to play on any day of the tournament weekend — Friday, Saturday and Sunday — and be available to play at any time throughout those days.
Another challenge to note is that a few games were even scheduled for 8 a.m. time slots on Sunday morning.
Eight in the morning is an early time, but team members had a week to realize this and plan ahead for an early start. For some reason, many players remained absent, leaving their teammates frantically calling anyone they could think of to fill the spot.
If they had a team presentation to give for class, would they have made it? Or would they have expected the others to make the presentation for them? Based on what happened at the tournaments, they would have slept in and not cared who picked up the slack.
College students are stereotypically known for their undependability, laziness and ability to come up with any excuse to get out of something they don’t want to do. So what was our team thinking when we decided to depend on college-aged students?
For one, when you know someone and you’ve seen their work ethic, you think it’s pretty safe to depend on them. Two, they willingly signed up to join the team. Three, when they guarantee you they’ll show up, usually you’re safe to rely on them. To those people, it’s time you realized that your actions affected other people. Next time, your decision to take responsibility might have more dire consequences than an intramural softball championship.
I’m a member of a team, and I rely on the team, I defer to it and sacrifice for it, because the team, not the individual.
Individual commitment to a group effort — that is what makes a teamwork, a company work, a society work, a civilization work. — Vince Lombardi
Holopirek is an Otis graduate student in journalism
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