Confidence & Teamwork

Individual confidence is defined as a feeling of self-assurance with one’s own abilities.  Teamwork is defined as the combined actions of a group working to achieve a common goal.

So, on any team the challenge is to identify individual abilities and apply them in the best ways to achieve those goals; and the ultimate goal of any endeavor should be to increase our individual abilities through the cooperation, communication & comradery of working as a team.

This past Friday I learned, or should say relearned, a valuable lesson on confidence & teamwork.  We all have different levels of skill, and those skills can vary day to day, especially at our age.  I have played this game since I was eight years old.  I am not and never have been a top-notch player.  But as I got older, my health, instincts & running abilities stayed with me, something I am most grateful for.  It has led at times to over confidence in my abilities, which can hurt the efforts of those around you and diminish your team goals.

You undoubtedly have experienced some level of this in your life.  Even if not personally you’ve certainly seen the effects overconfident people can have.  Sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn’t…but in the end the odds will always favor the team with the most collaborative effort.

In the first inning of that game, the third batter was up and there were two outs.  Carlos is a deep ball hitter, so I had him played deep.  He hit a towering fly ball that was less than midway out to left field.  I charged hard and made a sliding catch just before the ball hit the ground.  It was the 1^st inning…and it raised my individual confidence.  In the last inning, with us up only 2 runs we had to hold to win.  We got two quick outs and then another high pop up, this time more center left…again I charged and as I was concentrating on that ball, I heard someone yelling my name & the ball seemed to hang & drift towards me, which was the way the wind was blowing.  I didn’t have time to look where my teammates were, I was confident I could make that catch, so I called it…and then the ball drifted away from me and in a last-ditch effort I reached and as I slid my knee dug in…I stopped cold dead.  There were two other players that may have had a shot at that ball and as teamwork goes, I should not have even been trying to catch it…but my individual confidence in my abilities ending up hurting team goals, as we lost the game.

It certainly wasn’t the only play that cost us that game.  As a team we had numerous errors and struggled at the plate.  But I use this simple one play example to show how in any team sport we must consider not just our abilities, but those around us as well.  Baseball, football, and basketball are team sports.  Golf, bowling, & tennis are individual sports.  There is a major difference here.  In individual sports you are subject to your own abilities and over all confidence…but in team sports it is the abilities of the individuals working together that make the team confident as a whole.

The beauty of sport is that it can teach us valuable life lessons, while competing & having fun.  In life you can be overconfident, arrogant, self-centered, boastful & dictorial…but you will get nowhere far if you over play your abilities …especially when you come up against a confident & collaborative team.  Nothing wrong with confidence, it is the backbone of heroism, just remember you have a team around to help in your goals and aspirations.  A lesson often forgotten in the heat of battle, that leaves us more humble in our individual abilities & confidence. Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 AMEN.