It’s 2022, and Ellipsis has been in Nelson Bay for a few days. It’s my second Nationals with the team and I’ve been putting effort into getting a lay of the land. This means really noticing the small things - the best parking near the Thai place, the shape of the turn into the fields, the best spaces to warm up around the ground. It’s been important to know where the good shelter is from the rain, where is safe to leave my bag, and which fields my friends are playing on. It’s all part of soaking in the atmosphere of Nationals.
On the last day though, you could have set the other fields on fire and I wouldn’t have noticed. I have no memory of anything that happened outside the final two points of the Nationals final. I can tell you exactly what I saw and felt when I had the disc at 14-13 - who cut, in what order, how close Alex Gan was to my left hip, how quickly the poach came off the back, and then how quickly we gave it back. We got straight back on D, but you don’t get second chances against Sunder.
14-14. Universe. We call timeout.
I wasn’t always one for winning. I am at heart a peacemaker. I was raised in the Bench school of “fun first”, and excelled at that goal. Joy was an outcome, a process, everything.
Moving to a new city and club, I decided I wanted to see how the others lived - was winning all it was cracked up to be? Would focusing on the outcome unlock some level of play I was otherwise unable to access?
In 2021 I set myself a goal of crying if or when we got knocked out of contention. We then won Nationals in Canberra, so I pushed that goal to the next year. It’s not that I wanted to lose, but I wanted to be so wholly consumed by the team’s goals, to give myself so completely to the team, to be so perfectly aligned that I could really go super saiyan. It took a bit of time to adjust, but owning how much I cared was a superpower. It was an unending font of training motivation and desire to improve drawn from the club, the people around me, and what they wanted.
Which brings us back to the timeout. Col asks us “If we could have chosen to be in this position, with our fresh O-Line going out, receiving on Universe, would we have taken that?” A unanimous, raucous yes comes from the team. I don’t really think about the question. I don’t really weigh up the hypothetical - I know my team needs my noisy YES and I give it. There’s no “they’re the o-line I’m d-line”, there’s nowhere to hide, and there’s no backing down. I wasn’t scared yet.
Walking to the sideline, I take a beat to lean on my mental training. I tell myself “We are going to win this game”, and I almost spit the words out. My back’s up, and I’m ready to pour my energy in. I’ve practised consciously choosing to believe, and as soon as I say it I feel the strength of the collective come through. I don’t need water. I don’t need time. I need to be yelling. I need to pour my energy, passion, and love for my teammates out in a deafening stream of information and encouragement, to help them eke out any additional edge.
I paced the sideline, red in the face and hurting in the airways. I had no other thoughts but what the team might need. I’m sure I was horribly dehydrated and sunburnt, but that’s not what I remember experiencing – actually the opposite. As I stood on the sideline, it felt like I was having an out of body experience – my entire consciousness subsumed into the collective.
Alex Gan launched an unbelievable pull that trapped our offence in the back of the endzone, and we were unable to generate much movement on offence. We turned it over trying to huck out of it. As we scrambled to set up a defence, I remember feeling desperate. Running down the sideline to be better heard by the deep defenders, screaming information, hoping that they’d catch my voice from amongst the insane volume of noise. The desperation took over my whole body, and I could feel something akin to panic building.
Now I was scared. I could almost feel the pain ahead of time. I didn’t have any defences, because anything that could get between me and this pain would get between me and the team. All the zoom calls we had about being vulnerable and being willing to feel the sting were about to become painfully real.
And then we lost, and I cried. I wandered around without any real direction, stumbled into a spirit circle, told Lado he was very good, and then stared at my feet. It took all I had to just stand up and look at my captain while he spoke. There were tears from both teams, and deep, mutual respect through intense competition. I could feel that many people in that circle had also cared as much as they possibly could. I’d rather have been on the other side, but it’s still a special memory.
After the cheers I wandered around, searching for some emotional and physical space. But as soon as I got it, I realised all I wanted was to be back in the thick of the team vibe again. It pulled me in like a magnet, and the care that I had given to the team reached back out to me.
I am proud to be a loser. Not in a way that I would ever choose to be again, or even reflect on too much lest I get into an unhelpful mental spiral. When I think about the fact that we got broken on universe, against our greatest rivals, to lose the Nationals final, I’m still sad. But I don’t carry it with me. What I do hold dear and try to reflect on is what I did do – what I gave of myself to the larger whole, what I was capable of with such single-minded focus.
Winning in 2021 was nice, but I wouldn’t count it amongst my greatest achievements. I was proud to be in the presence of greatness that tournament, to watch my leaders put on an awe-inspiring performance amidst personal tragedy. I had spent most of the season injured and had been fairly emotionally disconnected from the team.
2022 was completely different for me – I had been working towards WUCC from the year prior and had decided to give everything I had to that process and that team. I committed to care as much as I could, to subsume my own goals to those of the team, to make the team-first decision as often as I could. I’m sure that this is partly just a coping strategy, but I know I lived up to that commitment. I am proud of the work I put in, proud of what I was able to contribute, and proud of how much I cared.
Focusing on my own journey and my own contribution presents a tempting escape – if I personally played well, isn’t that enough? Can’t I just be happy with that and allow the team outcome to be its own? That line of thinking is just that though – an escape.
Unless you’re running a crypto exchange, investing requires putting your own money in. That means exposing yourself to risk – AFDA won’t bail you out if you lose the National final. When Ellipsis went to Nationals, we pushed in all our chips. Everything I had to give was in the team tank, pushing towards the team goal. And then we fell short, there was no trophy full of joy to drink from. The reward took longer to come to the forefront - I had a greater bond with my teammates, a club I loved dearly, an understanding of what I was mentally capable of, and the sure knowledge that I had cared as much as I could.
I cried again in our team circle. I cried again at WUCC. And I’ve never wanted to come back so badly.