It occurred to me today that we compete a lot.

When I was in high school the only sport that I played competitively was soccer. I played soccer from the age of five all the way to the age of eighteen. I played soccer with other kids with whom I came to be great friends. I played soccer every spring in a league called the Optimist league, and it was a lot of fun. The older I got, the more I enjoyed the game, enjoyed getting better at playing the game.

And, I enjoyed beating other teams.

I also had the chance to work with a lot of great coaches, who each had a heart for teaching kids and for fostering their growth. I remember Coach Hipshear and Coach Felty and Coach Wesner; each of them did their best to try to instruct us little kids in the finer points of the game, and in the importance of competing well and being good sports, win or lose.

Some of the kids that I played soccer with in those early years, I ended up playing with on the high school varsity soccer team. On the varsity team, we wanted to be competitive when we played other teams; no one likes to be completely decimated by an opponent. We worked hard, to be as good as we could be, so that we would be able to play other teams and not look amateurish. I was a part of the varsity soccer team in my home town during its formative years, when the program was just starting to get off of the ground.

I remember my last competitive game of soccer, my senior year, as we were competing for a regional championship in early November (which is play-off season for soccer in Michigan); it snowed during that game and it’s quite the experience to play soccer in the snow.

Throughout all of those soccer experiences, there were many things that I liked about what I was doing: team camaraderie and cooperation, building friendships, learning what my body could do and making it stronger through sport, just to name a few. But, there were some times when it wasn’t a good thing for me to be involved in –> usually those bad moments, when I wasn’t doing what was right, were moments when I lost my perspective and crossed some competitive lines.

* * *

I am, as I have mentioned in previous posts, a very die-hard Notre Dame fan; during the course of my life, this has involved some good times and some bad times. Whenever they are able to compete against other teams, I feel proud to be a Notre Dame fan. At other times, when they are not able to compete, I feel embarrassed and ashamed. Of course their performance on their football field versus their opponents really has very little to do with me, but in situations where I am cheering for them, and I happen to be in the presence of other people who are cheering against them, then there is almost a competition by proxy, where I want my team to do really well as they compete against the team whose fans are cheering against my team.

At that point, it becomes somewhat personal.

This ‘competition by proxy’ is at its worst when I am at a Notre Dame game. I have, on so many occasions, screamed to the point of laryngitis during home Notre Dame football games. I’ve yelled at refs during home Notre Dame football games. I’ve cried in anguish at home Notre Dame football games, and I’ve cried in joy at home Notre Dame football games. When I’m sitting in the stands, their competition somehow becomes more like my competition.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I have rules of conduct. I don’t cheer against the other team –when I’m following the rules– as in I don’t cheer when they make mistakes or when they fail (unless it’s USC). I never cheer when anyone gets hurt –that’s just rabid and uncouth. If I happen to be at the Notre Dame-Navy game, or any other ‘service game’, I usually just keep my mouth shut because I think that our armed forces deserve significant respect.

But, here again, I just can’t seem to always control myself when it comes to competition. I have regretted acting like a nincompoop after way too many Notre Dame football games.

Maybe I’m just no good, when it comes to competing.

* * *

Recently, some friends of mine, along with my wife and I, have picked up learning the game of canasta together. Our friends learned it, and then, they taught it to us. We’ve had a lot of fun, and a bit of frustration, competing against each other. We’ve been playing together for about a year; sometimes, the guys win, sometimes, the girls win. It gets particularly frustrating when one team or the other goes on a streak of winning games.

Kind of like a certain football team from Indiana losing to a certain football team from Ohio in their last four matches, after having won the first two.

If you’ve never played canasta before, it’s a ‘partners’ game. Like many games that involve partners competing against others partners, there is a bit of strategy to the game that can be ultimately frustrating, especially when opponents are, at once, working to do their best and working to prevent their opponents from succeeding.

The essence of offense and defense.

Recently, these friends of ours, along with my wife and I, decided that we were going to enter into a bit of a tournament, among the four of us –the two teams. We decided that we were going to play a number of games together, and then, at the end of that series, the team that lost the greater number of games was going to have to cook dinner for the team that won the most games.

This, in hindsight, was a bad idea.

As if the game wasn’t already competitive enough, we added to the stakes with the wager, and we took away from how much any of us were able to enjoy those canasta games. After a number of very frustrating matches, we just quit with the whole idea.

* * *

I could be wrong, but I don’t think I’m alone in this. I don’t think that I’m the only person around who has a problem with competition, and competing well. In fact, I know that I’ve seen other people, who seem to be mild-mannered most of the time, who just lose it when it comes to competition.

Additionally, I think there are things that we do that make the likelihood of positive and proper competition much less likely. Tomorrow, I am going to zoom the camera out and we are going to look at the problem of competition on a larger scale.

Stay tuned…