Time is an especially critical thing in sports, as seen in the NCAA Championship, where a hundredth of a second could have completely changed the outcome of the game. I’ve heard the quote that “football is a game of inches,” uttered a million times. Though the quote makes complete sense, this is also quantifiable in temporal terms.
Sports are games of seconds and further fractions of seconds. As an ode to the pivotal nature of time, I want to talk about some of my brother’s battles with time.
When I was a junior in high school, my lacrosse team (Gilman) was competing for the Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association (MIAA) semi-final against our arch rival Boys’ Latin. Boys’ Latin has earned some national recognition as the best team in the country in the recent years after my graduation. The games between our two teams were always close with a single goal having decided the last five contests.
The game got off to a slow and choppy start, with each team playing solid defense and not giving up many goals. The score was 3-3 after the first half, and neither team was giving an inch. When we came back out, the timing of the game did not play to our favor. Boys’ Latin scored three goals over the third period and continued to best us by fractions of seconds on shots, ground balls and precision passing. As the game began to wind down, tempers on our team flared and we committed two penalties for unnecessary roughness in an embarrassing display of a lack of discipline.
Although we received two penalties, a Boys’ Latin player made an immature comment that cost him an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty, giving us the ball. There were only 62 seconds left in the game, our time was running out. We started the offensive possession with dwindling hope.
With a last ditch effort from deep, my brother Ryan let a shot fly that zoomed past the goalie and into the back of the net, making the score 6-4 with under a minute remaining. We considered this goal at best an attempt to spare our dignity but got the ball back on the ensuing faceoff. In the following haphazard sequence of events, my neighbor and current recently graduated Notre Dame lacrosse player Conor Doyle squeezed the ball into the back of the net in an incredible effort play.
With only 30 seconds remaining, we now felt the timing shift. Our willingness to win had finally opened a window. In a final draining effort, my brother won the faceoff and ran the ball down. He successfully surpassed four different defenders, put the ball through the goalie’s legs, tied the game and sent it into overtime.
When overtime came, we were counting down each second until we would win the game. The momentum had shifted in our favor, and we sensed the good fortune. Within a minute of overtime, my brother received a pass from classmate Justin George, ran down the side alley and buried it with ease. This won the game and sent us to the championship that we would eventually win.
Timing doesn’t just shift at random chance but changes due to an internal desire to play the game and a desire for victory that sometimes only comes in extremely desperate situations.
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