Underdogs rising to the challenge

Hey folks 🙂

Ok so today the result in my basketball match you could say inspired me to writing this post.

Here in Lyon basketball is huge along with soccer and rugby. When i started playing basketball in France back in September i really had no idea what to expect. I had just finished my season in Ireland’s premier league of basketball , The Superleague, and now i was about to play basketball in The Rhone Alps premier university league. For those of you who aren’t too up to date on your French geography, The Rhone Alps is a Province and Lyon is just a part of this Province.

Going into todays match we (University of Jean Moulin Lyon 3)  had played 12 games and only lost 2. Therefore we are quite high in the league table , 2nd or 3rd i think. The 2 games we had lost previously were to an Engineering university in Lyon called INSA. Todays match was again against INSA but not the team we played before. It was their 2nd team who from what i heard had a few injuries thus had some of their 3rd team listed on their squad. As you can imagine we were not exactly fearing this game and in the long run i actually think that having zero fear and zero anxiety contributed hugely to us losing.

When i was getting changed on the side of the court, a friend of mine (who is also on an exchange here in Lyon from Wales) walked in and asked me what i was doing there. Turned out that he was on the opposing team which i was excited about because we had always been talking about basketball and how we love it etc and now we were finally going to see each other play. But, what struck me was , before we started warming up he jogged over to me and in a very low voice he whispered “you are going to have no problem here”. Of course me being the over confident guy i am, i ran over to my team mates and started telling them in French how my mate reckons we are going to have no problem at all. This i can put my hand up and admit was a terrible idea because my team just got so relaxed , the warm up lost its intensity completely and my teammates were laughing and joking a little more than what they usually would. We of course were thinking about to how the 1st team only beat us by 4.

So the game starts and all i can say was the other team were like Bulls which wasn’t great for us at all considering the ball was red. The whole team giving 120% chasing every loose ball , attempting to get every rebound and most importantly they were making their shots!

 

40 minutes later, the buzzer goes and final scoreline shows us losing by 3 points. As you can imagine they were delighted. I would of been to. My team and I however hung our heads as we walked off. It was the most frustrating game of basketball i think i ever played and only have myself to blame.

Anyway what i am basically getting to with this post is that today really made me realize that just because a team looks like they have already won on paper DOES NOT mean that they are going to win. FACT!!! If this was the case sport as we know it would not exist. Losing today taught everyone a lesson on the court, it taught us that we can’t ever approach a game like we did and it taught the other team that impossible is nothing.