By Kyle Jorrey
Sports Editor
For more than a full five minutes after the final buzzer sounded at Jenny Craig Pavilion, I and two other fellow Waves fans remained seated in our blue folding stadium chairs.
Our eyes stayed transfixed on the electronic scoreboard that revealed the game’s final score, 75-71, until the technician pulled the plug. It felt as if we stared hard enough, then maybe, just maybe, the outcome would be different. After all, the real outcome seemed almost too much to swallow.
As a sports fan, one learns that these kind of defeats come with the territory; without them, then the incredible triumphs wouldn’t mean as much — “there is no sweet without the sour.”
This past weekend I got a hard dose of sports reality as I watched the Waves men’s basketball team lose its second-round WCC tournament game to the University of St. Mary’s Gaels, signaling an end to what has been a trying season. But as difficult and disappointing as that defeat was for me and fellow Wave fans, it was watching the women’s team capture its second WCC title in two years the next day that taught us the most.
I can remember when I first met with both the team’s coaches last semester, weeks before the start of the upcoming season — confidence was high, plans were in place, and each team felt it had the perfect ingredients for a winning campaign.
That’s when adversity struck.
Like trying to play chess and realizing the old board you’re using is missing a bishop and a rook, injury hit both teams hard, removing pieces whose moves had been thought crucial to the plan for success. One by one both Waves teams lost player after player, but when the dust cleared, they still had to take the floor.
And that’s what it means to be a team; it means regardless of everything that goes on around you, you still are expected to play, to perform. Nobody just says, “Alright, we just can’t do it. Take the win. We’re going home.” Sure, the Chicago Bulls could have used a couple of seasons off after MJ left, but they played, and lost, because that is just part of the game and the fans expect it. Life is a lot of the same stuff.
This season the Pepperdine women’s team defined what it is to overcome diversity. Week in and week out, playing with new lineups, new players, new strategies, they managed to win. Whether you’re a basketball fan, a sports fan or not, you have to respect that, because the ability to overcome the unexpected is something I think we all admire.
We can’t always take a timeout, get a do-over or check the replay; sometimes we have to take life on life’s terms, and that is the most difficult of challenges. Yeah, maybe it was just basketball, maybe it was just a game, but what the Lady Waves did this season was meet adversity and face it head-on, and in their victory, and the men’s loss, we should all learn a lesson.
—Want to give props to the Lady Waves? E-mail Kyle Jorrey at kbj34@hotmail.com.
March 13, 2003