Memories

The annual inter-college volleyball competition was held today. After a day of battle, we qualified to the semi finals. In the journey, we defeated the defending champion - Newman College. Emerging as group champion, we went on ending the losing streak against our arch-rival Trinity College in the quarters! It was pure exhilaration when the final landed on their court. People were rushing into the court hugging and congratulating each other.

I chose to close my eyes, just for a few seconds, to savour the sweet taste of victory.

My legs were trembling. I guessed I have over-exerted them for a day of matches which started since nine in the morning.

My mind was clear. I thank God for the fine team He has sent me. We are certainly not the best team (more than half of us never touched a volleyball before), but everyone was enthusiastic. Everyone was willing to learn! Everyone was positive, our target was simple - WIN.

Winning is good. But I feel that there’s more to just winning matches.

A very crucial thing that struck me was nobody showed any respect to the opponents on the court. Pride was taken in when our opponent’s main player got too psyched up, lost his patience, smashed the ball into the net and was taken off the game. And they lost the match.

Everybody on the court shouts the word ‘f***’. Even after the game when Pat gave us a lift from the stadium, the word was mentioned for at least 20 times. It was barely a five minutes journey.

I’ve played some competitions and won some matches, but I’ve never felt so uneasy after winning like what I’m feeling now. In IMU with the ever realiable M204 team, we won our matches with our superior team work and skills. We had never sought to play mental games. After the game, we would thank our opponents for the game and take photos together.

I do understand that in a competition, everyone will be tensed up and raise our voices. I am no different. I yelled, I showed faces of disappointment when a mistake was done. But in the end, we would apologise to each other. We can have this respect among our teammates, why not extend it to our opponents?

I noticed the disgusted look on our opponents’ faces when they lost a point not because we outclassed them in skills, but the words that came out from our mouth.

Words are powerful tools.
It can destroy, like a knife that stabs into your heart.
It can shape form, it determines the atmosphere of any situation.
It can create, create opportunities, friendships, trusts, everthing!
It can definitely enlarge people’s limit, to increase somebody’s confidence and challenge them to do achieve more!

"Words are not as satisfactory as we should like them to be, but, like our neighbours, we have got to live with them and must make the best and not the worst of them." — Samuel Butler 

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 10th, 2007 at 11:01 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.