There are those who would malign youth sports and who might brushstroke a portrait of overzealous parents and children, unrealistic expectations, and damaged hearts and minds. Some would argue against athletic competition altogether, relegating its existence, and more importantly, its popularity, to something barbaric, unrefined, and Neanderthal within us.
Undoubtedly there are such parents and children, and in some cases---as with all endeavors in life---flawed human nature begets a mutation of a thing that was once, or should once have been, noble, worthwhile, and valuable.
Competition, at the core of its beating heart, is about hard work, honor, sportsmanship, dedication, goal-setting, and, ultimately, achievement. In a great many sports, the fruit of competition blooms in the loss of the individual and the formation of the team concept.
The indomitable John Wooden, architect of a 291-10 record and ten NCAA Division I men's basketball championships at UCLA between 1964 and 1975, said of friendship:
"Strive to build a team filled with camaraderie and respect: comrades-in-arms."
The 2006-2007 Arapahoe Ice Warriors Midget Minor AA ice hockey team was such a group of young men.
From the drop of the puck in the first practice it was clear that here, in this collection of fifteen and sixteen year-old boys-soon-to-become-men, there was perhaps a small measure of the magic and determination of which the great basketball legend often spoke.
As the Warriors hockey season wore on, the wins piled up, but more importantly, strife turned to the pursuit of common goals, friction became passion, the past became the gloriously attainable future, and the traits of the individual dissipated in favor of the wont of team.
These boys, these unrelenting young men, accomplished success as a unit, as one mind and heart, that none of them had ever before accomplished alone:
A league-best regular season record at 14-1-3.
A power ranking in the top 20 teams in the country.
A Colorado Tier II State Championship, outscoring their opponents by a collective 19 goals to 1.
A Rocky Mountain Tier II District Championship in Dallas, Texas, beating teams from Dallas, Houston, and Phoenix enroute to an overall 24-10 goal differential.
And with the championship win in Dallas came the ultimate prize: a National Championship bid. The Arapahoe Ice Warriors, for the first time in the history of the association, would enter an elite field of twelve teams to compete for the honor of best team in the country.
The first game at Nationals would see the Warriors paired against a team that rode the number one national raking for the majority of the season, the Affton Americans (St. Louis), easily the best team Arapahoe had faced to date. After allowing a power-play goal against with only :44 gone from the clock, the Warriors would settle down and with only 4:02 left in the game, Affton's lead was just 2-1. The Americans then scored on a jailbreak and won the contest 4-1 after garnering an empty-net goal with thirty-four seconds on the clock.
The second game, a superbly competitive hockey match against the Mid Fairfield Blues (Connecticut)---during which the team from Colorado earned the lead several times---was lost in heartbreaking fashion when a turnover, with 1:37 to go and the Warriors on a power play, afforded the other team a short-handed goal and a tie. The Blues capitalized with a shoot-out win after a sudden-death overtime period in which neither team could score.
The third and final game was a stunning 5-1 loss to the California Stars, a contest in which the Warriors scored first but then played more like a team that had lost its wind than the champions any who had seen them play knew them to be. It was as if the magnitude of it all---the attention, the expectations, the national stage with all it's elite players, scouts, and pressures---came crashing down upon these twenty young men over three final, grueling, seventeen minute periods of ice hockey.
A season seemingly finished in defeat.
And for any who have ever seen it, the vision of Slovene ski jumper Vinko Bogataj's brutal finish, disintegrating on the giant ramp in 1970 and used in the opening of ABC's Wide World of Sports for nearly a decade, the agony of defeat was forever immortalized.
Devastating loss is perhaps the hardest reality to confront, particularly when preceded with near unmitigated victory. The weakness of consummate winners may be their inability to comprehend the trials of a meltdown---the incredible challenge of recovering a ship's course when lost in the eye of a terrible, unforeseen, unrecognizable storm.
It is a maxim in life that winning makes everything better. Mistakes seem fewer and less egregious. Tribulation appears nonexistent and trouble has no ugly head to rear. But in defeat, this is when we come face to face with an unfamiliar reflection staring up from the abyss. In fact, it may be the only time we truly face the abyss.
But to return from defeat---to rise from the ashes, brush oneself off, and reflect gloriously on past successes; to give defeat no more foothold than a small, ultimately insignificant, passing sadness---therein lies the most shaping victory in sports.
And also in life.
The agony of defeat overthrown by the glory of having played the contest.
Most know that Vinko Bogataj did not die in that fateful wreck atop the world stage, but few may be aware that he did not break a single bone in his body, nor did he suffer anything more serious than a mild concussion. Even one of the worst imaginable defeats---indeed the visage that epitomized the agony therein---was in reality no more debilitating than another unsuccessful ski jump.
Or an unsuccessful run at a youth National Championship in ice hockey.
John Wooden also said:
"Success is not a destination, but a journey."
The 2006-2007 Arapahoe Ice Warriors Midget Minor AA team indeed had a perfect season, because as much as it was---and will always be---about wins and losses, it was also about the journey. In defeat, these young men faced a different kind of challenge: to reemerge as the teenagers they were beforehand; better for the experience, having grown in different and more profound ways than in ultimate victory.
And they will still raise two unmatched championship banners, testimony to an achievement that will forever seal the fruits of honor, sportsmanship, dedication, teamwork, and perhaps most of all, friendship.
The buzzer has sounded.
