The Dream Team
The Dream Team
By Tanya Miller
Harwood Union High School
How could we possibly lose? I've never been an extremely confident person or athlete, but by the time that we had qualified for the Junior Worlds Lightning championship, my fourteen-year-old ego went straight through the roof. After a week of sailing in Milwaukee, my team had qualified through the Junior North American championships, making us the best team in the country for our age. My brother Chad was the skipper for our boat and our friend Dan was the tactician, leaving myself to man the dangerous waters of the bow. We three teenagers went home with a new confidence, desperately looking forward to the following summer that we would be spending in Finland.
The Dream Team's confidence plummeted, however, when we began the week's races. We were witnesses to the back of the pack, the agony of defeat. Our first encounter with the boats left us discouraged. Burgundy, the first boat we were given, felt like it was going to fall apart with even the smallest gust of wind. Its boat speed was so slow that it left my team paranoid. We felt that something must have been wrong with us; there wasn't. We struggled with bent booms, halyards that kept popping out so our sails came down in the middle of the race and a broken eye ring on the mast that holds the spinnaker pole. The latter made me responsible for holding the spinnaker pole, which speared me several times in the shoulder, thanks to the gusts of twenty miles per hour wind. We ended up coming in sixth out of ten with the Brazilians leading the way for a consecutive third time. What could have possibly made this happen to us, the Dream Team?
My reactions ranged from jealousy of my fellow teammates from our club who had done better, to anger at the blatant acts of cheating by the Greeks, to outrage at the boat conditions. This was not my finest hour. I don't know why I expected to win the Championship, I just figured that since we were the best in our area that we would cream everybody else. I was beyond presumptuous; I was just another arrogant American. Looking back, I am so embarrassed to be a part of that cliche.
When I arrived home after a grueling ten days of racing and traveling, I was exhausted. I sat down at my computer and e-mailed everyone whom I had met in Finland. I immediately regretted my poor behavior towards the other competitors. I had been willing to blame everything but not us, the Dream Team. We were perfect in my eyes. It didn't occur to me that we had done anything wrong. I just then realized that we were far from perfect. We couldn't just sit around whining about our friends who had gotten in off on a stupid technicality, nor about the Greeks cheating, nor about the boat conditions. Everyone had to use the same boats; they just knew how to sail them better than we did. I'm not saying it was completely my fault--we really did have some terrible luck--but I realized that I have to take some responsibility for what happens to me and to those around me.