The Angry Athlete

December 28, 2015

 You can watch any sporting event on the tube and notice a particular player who is slightly different from the others. I am not specifically talking about the star athlete. It could be the guy who appears to have their motor running at a frantic speed, the player that looks disjointed, angry, and relentless and looks like a loose cannon. I'll be watching a football game and wonder why a guy on one team seems to be adding extra zealous physical maneuvers on another player when the play doesn't call for it. Why is he playing like his pants are on fire? What is driving this nutbag? Is he trying to rack up penalty yards, or is he one of those players making a statement?

Most of us have seen this person on the court, field, diamond, rink, and playground. I remember the boy that threw the dodge ball harder and sometimes aimed to malign and hurt the other kids. Was he just a bully with social issues? Or maybe he was a kid with superior strength that didn't possess the common sense yet to control his emotions? As you play more team sports and even one on one sports, you will come across these athletes bringing their personalities and emotions to the game, and as a teammate or opponent, you better know how to deal with these people.

While playing in a church league softball game, I witnessed an over-emotional player meltdown in front of everybody on the diamond and stands. He was the opponent's best guy, and he was very vocal as a player. This being a church league where such behavior is supposed to be held in check as we play with glory. As we call it, his competitive fire pushed the awful moment to a limit because our team was winning, and he couldn't will his guys to victory. He got told to leave the game, but not before he cursed us all and had to be restrained. I saw him a year later, and he was allowed to play again, but not before he apologized to everybody. He turned out to be so embarrassed by his behavior that we became a new person, the person he wanted to be.

Many of the top athletes in any sports are the stoic and cool cucumber type who have mastered their emotions and manifest their internal engine into better performance. Of course, this is not going to be everybody, but somewhere down the line, every great athlete knows when to turn down the emotion and up the focus. Their focus and attention to detail are what will separate them from the competition. You also will not see an overtly emotional player who is performing in a groove or mental zone. When playing in higher consciousness, thinking and reacting are not part of your reactions, and you are at your peak.

When you come across the manic player on the field, you can torment them more or use their demons against them. They will either foul you or do something detrimental to their teams' performance. You can try a martial art approach of letting them over use their energy to make forced mistakes. In hockey, each team has its enforcer whose main job is to neutralize another team's emotional fortitude. In baseball, some pitchers will throw inside pitches to intimidate another player who is deemed a "bad guy." Lastly, the teammates who can find ways to gain emotional and physical superiority usually win, and sometimes it isn't clean and pretty. Not all emotion is useless and can motivate teams and players, but it is not considered a long-term playing strategy. Sooner or later, the cooler heads will prevail.