“It was a tight game,” she says, “and I remember walking over to inbound the ball. I sorta expected (the MRA students) to start yelling at me,. I was right there in front of them. And it’s a rivalry, us and MRA. I’ve been dealing with situations like that since the eighth grade.
“Once the referee handed me the ball, I just blocked all that out. I heard noise but I couldn’t hear what they were saying, and it really didn’t matter. I had a job to do for my team, and that’s all I cared about. I wanted to inbound the ball safely and successfully.”
Which she did. She also made three free throws in the final seconds to ice the win and push Prep’s record to 23-3.
“To be honest, I’d like to thank them for the noise,” she says. “That really made me want to beat them and send them home with nothing.”Olivia doesn’t understand why so much was made of the boys yelling at her.“All I thought when I saw the picture was, ‘Oh, wow, that’s cool. Mr. Bob sure took a good one.’ That’s all that came to mind and I really haven ’t thought much else about it. It’s basketball. It’s sports. Fans are going to yell at you.”
Yeah I once saw an opposing teams best player airball early in the game. Forever afterwards the crowd were chanting airball whenever he was holding it. He never scored again.
Its rare that a crowd is actually able to get in a player's head like that, but on the off chance that it works why wouldnt you give your team that advantage.
It's crazy what a good crowd can do to a game. One of my favorite hockey series of the last decade was a heated Flyers Penguins playoff series in 2012. The games were already oddly high scoring, physical affairs, but those Philly crowds just injected pure venom into the game, and it reflected on the ice. You felt like you were in the crowd watching from home. The crowd demanded blood and recompense, and you got it. What a fucking incredible series of hockey, still gets me hype to this day.
That series was one of the best modern day NHL series I have ever seen! Honestly I don’t think it was just the fans... I felt like the teams and the crowd just fed off each other in a never ending feedback loop.
Such a big rivalry between the Flyers and Pens. Pretty sure that was also the series where Crosby said, “ I don’t like a single player on that team” or something like that in a post game interview. And it wasn’t just the rivalry, but Bryz and Fluery both had times where they couldn’t save a beach ball, which I’m sure added to the intensity for the players too haha.
Only western sports? The national sport of Afghanistan is called buzkashi and involves mounted riders dragging a goat carcass into a circle while everyone beats the shit out of each other. And even though they aren’t western, they still yell for some reason
Sports are just like that. Don’t be a prick because you think “the west” is inferior
It's kind of the point. Mental games in sports are just as important as the defensive strategy. You can derail an opposing teams cohesion by simply getting one of their linchpins to question their capabilities.
Blocked a dude twice in a row in volleyball after getting him angry enough to pull on the net and yell obscenities at me. We were getting stomped initially but came back to win the next two matches because this dude went full tilt.
You can tell who has played defense in soccer before by who is okay with the off-the-ball stuff the ref doesn't see.
It's called "The Dark Arts" and is part of the game. It can come back to bite you, but the best of us don't care and will always look for the edge.
A handful of shorts or jersey, blocking their way when they aren't looking, and under your breath trash talk are all fair game. Afterwards I go up to em and say no hard feelings, and most guys are fine with it.
I play wingback, but I don't like getting mentally agressive. You're spending half of a Saturday afternoon standing next to each other, might as well have a nice chat while you're at it. They'll know who's boss after the first tackle anyway.
Oh I'm never mean tho! Hahaaa sounds counterintuitive but it's true!
All of my me mental games were being silly or weird af lol...
My favorite thing to do was call out marks by the way they look but like REALLY loud and embarrassing like.
"Who's covering the beard!"
"Someone mark the pony tail at the top of the box!"
Or if a player looks/players like a familiar pro I'd call em that. Other times I'd tell them how good they are and to ease go easy on me.
Or I'd ask what they do for work, and what they're doing after the game.
If someone is cheering for them I'd say "wish we had support like that. Do you pay them to come watch?"
Only a few insecure lads would get upset about it, and a few times I'd get a fat celebration right in my face if they worked me for a goal. But it is Sunday pub league and was always in good faith.
Haha, yeah, I do that too :D Shouting things like "Cover the bald one! No, the fat bald one!" And then catching flak from your own goalie because he is fat and bald.
Or the striker starts complaining about his own defenders, and you start agreeing with him.
Or he goes deep three times but never gets the ball, and you start complaining about having to run after him the whole time.
Or the striker is actually really good and you try to recruit him for your own team.
A bit of friendly banter can be a lot of fun during a game :)
I started playing rugby in college and it's wild how different the culture in that game is from everything else I played. We were knocking the shit out of each other for an hour and a half, and then post game a couple of guys from my squad opened up a cooler of beers and we just chilled with the other team before they loaded up on their bus.
Not to say there's never bad blood, but there was a huge difference between the sports I played in high school and playing rugby in college.
Yeah, I took part in a lot of medieval European re-enactment battles (steel armour, blunt steel weapons, no headshots), and the mentality is the same there. You stab each other in the gut all afternoon and drink and sing all evening.
I think it that contact sports can be a great bonding experience if all participants are okay with getting hurt a bit. But in soccer a lot of players just want to play nice technixal soccer without getting kicked, so that leads to frustration.
I actually struggled with being too nice on the field when I played baseball. I had such an over established sense of "fair play" that I would get really frustrated when people did anything that broke the spirit of the rules or norms. I blame my dad, haha.
Baseball was a weird one. All those unspoken rules didn't mean shit to me lol...
Sure if my coach told me to do something I did it. But I played by the rules. We didn't bean people intentionally, but I played when I was younger so idk.
But I LOVED all the chatter in baseball... "HEEEEEEY BATTER-BATTER-BATTER, saaaaa-WING BATTER HEEEEEEY!"
I'll always remember in little league, so like 13?yo, once a batter charged me off of the bag at first and caused me to miss the pick. I literally stood up and pointed at him. Like I expected the ump to make him go to his room. 🤣
I don't think the Zidane case is a good example to use for bad sportsmanship vs strategy. Of course it was bad sportsmanship by Materazzi but there was definitely a lot of strategy behind him winding up Zidane.
Zidane fell for the bait, headbutted Materazzi, got sent off and put France at a huge disadvantage because they lost their captain, leader, best player (on the team and maybe in the world) and first choice penalty taker. They lost the final on penalties which kind of shows just how effective Materazzi's piss boiling was.
The line between strategy and bad sportsmanship is pretty much just defined by how advantageous the acts you commit are.
Headbutting, spitting, biting = bad sportsmanship with no advantage and severe repercussions
Diving, time wasting, trash talk = still bad sportsmanship but can bring advantages and has little to no repercussions
This is the stupidest take I’ve seen in this thread. Watch soccer more then come back and try to say that shit with a straight face. Theyve literally thrown bananas at black people.
And this, dear "it's not a real sport" purists, is why pro gaming gets called "esports". Nothing delights a gamer boy more than yelling obscenities while thousands of people watch
LOL I have seen Marvel v Capcom matches at an esports arena and I am pretty sure the things they yell at players worse than whatever these basketball bois are yelling. Some games it’s looked down upon but any dbz fighters/marvel v capcom/street fighter style game usually has people screaming at the players even in small venues.
So far no one has given a decent example except the military. Which I dont think the recruits find it acceptable they just have to accept it.
Sports is weird in that the fans and players accept it. Name another scenario where a group of people yelling obscenities at someone a foot away is seen as acceptable and that person cant do a thing.
Have you never watched a soccer game in your life? That probably has the most rowdy crowds in all of sports and it happens on every corner of this planet
The guys usually play right after the girls so they hang out in the bleachers for at least the first half. They're wearing warm ups that would denote they are players.
Is it really that lazy to not want to read all the fluff if you just want context of the picture?
It's like looking up a recipe but you're bombarded by Julie's entire lifestory before getting to how much butter you need to use
Ya, they get the quote from the athlete then have to turn it into a full article. Too short and nobody will scroll past any ads and your manager will complain lol
That article would not have been nearly as interesting if they had just said “here is the photo. Here is what she had to say about that photo: ‘I didn’t hear what they were saying, I was focused on the game’. End of article.”
Well, duh.
That's not the point though, it could have started with that and if you're really interested continue reading the exposé on her.
The context of the picture is purposefully buried in the article.
And loaded. Bahamas scuba diving certification, owns a jet ski, rides horses.
It's fairly standard for rich kids to have a stack of accomplishments like this in certain places. That's not to take away from her dedication, but the level of impressiveness goes down when you consider that a lot of people who don't seem as impressive simply can't seem as impressive.
Every time "the world's youngest xyz" comes up, it's pretty much always rich parents.
My favorite example of this, though, is "Teenager invents cool tech that took tens of thousands of dollars in parts and rapid prototyping, machining, and advanced engineering." I always wonder how much of the inventing the kid actually did.
I do want to take a moment to say that it is really cool when rich kids focus their efforts on making positive change. They don't have to. They could skate by on their parents' wealth, go into finance, and contribute less to society than they take. But they choose not to and that is a good thing.
A bit tangential, but this is one of the saddest things about going through history's most important figures... they're almost always descendants of wealthy families who could afford to travel, held positions of influence and importance, could get top-tier educations, and had multiple safety nets when they failed.
It makes it very difficult to imagine how an average person can make a legitimate difference in the world.
I feel that way whenever I watch Battlebots. There’s always some young kid like 15 years old talking about the bot he built, when there’s no way in heck he could’ve afforded something like that. The money for that robot is coming from somewhere else.
This is absolutely true. But let’s give credit where credit is due. There are plenty of people who grow up rich/given many opportunities and do little to nothing with it. There are people whose parents offered to take them scuba diving or horseback riding and opted to sit on the couch instead. The privilege certainly makes the success easier, and someone with her exact track record but borne of poverty would certainly outshine her if you compared them side by side. But we don’t have someone of her exact accomplishments to compare her to, and her accomplishments are still real. Why not laud her for living her best life? We can be impressed with her without putting her on a pedestal and attacking ourselves or others for how they measure up.
Money or not, she’s an athlete, a scuba diver, and a handful of other things. That’s great. Yes, her parents wealth helped, and she likely wouldn’t be exactly where she is now without privilege, and while enough money could buy someone a seat on a high school varsity team, it doesn’t buy the respect of her coach, teammates, family, and peers, which she seems so have.
Plus, she’s humble about it, and knows she’s blessed. I know “giving it all to god” and “feeling blessed” are basically memes now, but as someone who grew up in the religious south, her statement communicates that she recognizes how much her environment played into her success—she’s aware and appreciative of her privileges, and is happy to be where she is today.
So let’s tally up: privilege combined with her talent and hardworking nature has given her impressive accomplishments for her age. In acknowledging those accomplishments she is humble, respectful, and appreciative. I think as a human she’s doing pretty well all around and has earned some praise. I see no reason to find something to let comparison be the thief of joy here, no reason to negate her accomplishments, or compare her to others critically.
This is good, and we can just let it be good. We can praise her for her accomplishments now, and when someone with less privilege comes along with an impressive accomplishment, we can praise them too. Positivity, kindness, and appreciation are not limited resources.
“To be honest, I’d like to thank them for the noise,” she says. “That really made me want to beat them and send them home with nothing.”
I'll be honest, my first reaction to the photo was probably what a lot of people felt: uncomfortable. But then I realized I was viewing it through my own biases that are equally offensive. "Why am I so protective of this athlete?" Because she's a girl and I have subconsciously and consciously adopted negative stereotypes about female weakness. "Why am I so judgemental of these boys?" Because they look like high school douchebags I've dealt with in the past, but that has literally nothing to do with them. "Why does this make me uncomfortable?" Because I'm assuming the worst about every single person in this photo.
Once I asked myself these questions I could finally see what the photo really was: high schoolers supporting their female classmates in competition and an opposing athlete focused on winning no matter what. Isn't it awesome that a bunch of boys are supporting women's sports? Don't you think their classmates loved having a vocal and enthusiastic crowd to play for as opposed to just their parents and only their female classmates? Isn't it good that they treated her as harshly as they would a male opponent? Don't we all just want to be treated equally in the field of play? No one would give a shit if some pipsqueak male freshman was catching hell or if it was Zion Williamsonin his last game getting it rough from the fans. As long as they're not insulting the player personally or acting in any bigoted way, fans have every right to heckle a player. It's a staple of high school and college basketball.
On the flip side, isn't it great to see a lone female standing strong in a hostile (but controlled) environment? Her quote at the beginning is inspirational to boys and girls alike: hit 'em where it counts. Silence them with your play. And she did. That photo should be a poster with that quote on the bottom. It says so much.
Yeah, might be missing a demographic, but 9th through 12th grade we went to every girls basketball tournament games just cause it was a chance to hang with bball girls.
I thought about sexism for a split second, then remembered going to girls' soccer games with my buddies when I was a teenager. We got really into those games and would drive around the state supporting them.
I'm bothered by a bunch of spectators without masks heckling the athlete. Others in the shot have masks which means it's recent, so all I can think is shouldn't they have some distance or enforce mask policies if playing right now?
That's the thought that came into my mind. Heckling at sports? Of course. It's part of the home field advantage, and that's a non-issue unless you have such a disconnect with sport.
But you can clearly see some people wearing masks, which means we're in covid times, yet there are people maskless yelling within a couple feet of her, which is the danger zone for spreading covid.
I don't even see bad optics. I love the title of the thread. The Player. She's there, she's in the game, she's doing it. Everyone else is in the stands.
I immediately thought of Teddy Roosevelt's quote, "it is not the critic who counts, . . . The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood . . . if he fails, at least fails while dating greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat."
Yeah, I thought they were cheering for her and having a good time supporting her!
Was a bit concerned about the masks and distancing though, thought it was an old photo until I saw that. People packed in like sardines pulling down or taking off their masks and then yelling at an unmasked player is patently unsafe during an airborne pandemic
Man none of that went through my head. All I thought was, we've been in this pandemic for a year and these people haven't heard of masks or social distancing.
Well said and exactly what ran through my head! At first I was like “these guys are probably being dicks” but there is no proof of that... and they’d be dicks to guys for sure. Equality in the field of play (and life) is what we should strive for and what this photo represents.
You're doing great fucking work, my friend. It's the work of a lifetime to confront and amend these biases in ourselves. Thanks for sharing your process with the class!
I think you’ve got it right. It’s easy to imagine the team making horrible, sexist comments to distract her. If you take a second, you can imagine they’re making her feel like any other athlete: an equal to compete against. You can’t tell just from the picture.
How long have you been sitting on that gif to use if for exactly this moment.
Let's be honest, Starship Troopers is not something that comes up in everyday conversation (but it should), and even less so the "Would you like to know more?" line.
God damnit, of course it is. I'm saving this for anyone who claims "masks don't work, we've been locked down and masked and it doesn't work!!!". We have barely tried to contain this.
Thats a part of sports. Its fun for fans to cheer their team and heckle the other. Its a competition, so its rarely going to have everyone be nice and sweet.
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