“Give It to Marcus”: On Sports Metaphors and the Fear of Failure

In that moment, these are the four most terrifying words I can imagine: “Passers, ball to Jamie. Jamie, give it to Marcus.” Immediately my breath, already a shallow pant from two hours of intense play, catches in my throat, and then moves toward more of a panicked hiccup.

The last thing I want is for my setter to give the ball to me.

I’m playing in my first real match as a freshman on my college volleyball team. We’re up against Northern Michigan, and I can’t clearly remember a single detail from the moment I walked into the gym today; everything is a blurry haze of excitement and nerves and confusion, and the only thoughts fumbling through my brain have been running along the lines of “don’t screw up… don’t embarrass yourself… don’t draw attention.” Every time the ball has come near me, I’ve had to fight the urge to close my eyes and sprint to the locker room. I’ve been on a two-hour long adrenaline rush. I haven’t even felt like I’ve been living in my own body—someone else must be in charge, because surely I can’t move my arms and legs without a working brain.

And now that my whole team has resigned itself to the fact that we’re likely to lose our first match of the year, the first match of my college career, my coach wants me to take the set and make the kill to get us back in the game.

He must be absolutely insane.

My coach continues with instructions for the rest of the timeout, but I’m not listening. I can’t physically hear. I’m trying to remember what I’m doing here, how I ended up in this position. I’m trying pull myself out of the blurry haze that has encompassed me for this entire surreal evening, but it’s just not working. I can feel my pulse in the lower half of my face and in my thumbs, and I feel that my head is going to explode like a blueberry. Not the most creative simile, but my brain isn’t fully functioning, and it’s the only thing I picture, the only thing I can consider. My brain will look like a squashed bit of fruit if I have to think my way through this. What a waste of antioxidants.

As my team runs back onto the court, and as I wander in the direction that I hope is the court, one of my teammates catches my arm. To this day, I can’t remember who it was—that’s how stumped my brain was. I wouldn’t be shocked to learn that my head was lolling about and that I was drooling a bit. But I very clearly remember what she said to me:

“He wouldn’t have ordered the set to you if he didn’t know you would put it away.”

Not the most exciting or inspiring or eloquent pump-up speech you’ve ever heard? That’s fine. It was what I needed to hear at that moment.

And since that moment, it’s the only pump-up speech I’ve ever needed. I did make the kill. We did lose the match. I did learn something important.

Something Important #1: Before my teammate’s bit of advice, I had no confidence in my ability to play at the level expected of me. I felt out of place, out of my league, like a phony and fraud. What I needed, what my teammate knew I needed, was to hear that I belonged there. And being informed matter-of-factly that the coach that I respected, the coach for whom I had left my hometown and literally every single person I knew, had confidence in me—well, that was the first step. And since then, when I get in situations where I start to doubt my ability—publicly posting a blog with a sports metaphor that’s not super cheesy, for example—when I feel myself losing that confidence, I remind myself that I am good enough to be there—if I weren’t good enough to be there, I wouldn’t have gotten there in the first place.

Something Important #2: The word know.

“He wouldn’t have ordered the set to you if he didn’t know you would put it away.”

He didn’t think I could put it away, and he didn’t hope that I could put it away. He didn’t just figure I had the best odds of putting it away. He knew—or at least my teammate said he did.

Now, the literal part of my brain—which is a significant portion—will counter that there’s really no way my coach could have known that I wouldn’t screw up that play. Had he looked at my stats for that game—and perhaps he had—he would have seen that there was actually a good chance that I would hit the ball directly into the net. But he knew. What does that mean?

In order to make this second point about knowing, I have to digress for a moment and talk about one of my all-time favorite books, 1984. I promise it’s relevant.

Those of you that have read the novel will remember the Orwellian creation “doublethink”—the concept that people can and must hold in their heads two opposing ideas at one time and believe them both. Or, if we allow Wikipedia to clarify my definition: “the act of ordinary people simultaneously accepting two mutually contradictory beliefs as correct.”

I will argue to the death that 1984 applies to absolutely everything, and that includes my first college volleyball match—my coach knew that there was a possibility that I could fail, but he also knew I would put it away. That meant a lot to me then, and it continues to mean a lot to me now. There are times when I am in a situation where I could fail and be embarrassed—think back to my example of trying to write this blog without making people gag. But before I speak up, I have to convince myself, really convince myself, that I will succeed. Not that I might succeed, not that I can succeed, not that I will try to succeed—but that I will succeed.

There can’t be a bit of hesitation in my head that I might fail.

But simultaneously, I’m not an idiot, and those of you who know me know that I’m not, by any stretch of the imagination, an optimist.

Hence the doublethink.

When we’re going into something important, in which failure is a possibility, we cannot spend time—any amount of time—considering how we might fail, how it will feel to fail, what rock we’ll climb under if we do fail. While we obviously know that failure is a possibility, it is simply not something we can allow ourselves time to consider. Instead, what we must know is that we will succeed, how it will feel to succeed, what we’ll do once we do succeed.

Ultimately, what this post is about is preparing ourselves for a challenge. And my advice to you is this: get your brain in order.

No more considering the lowest possible score you’ll be satisfied with; no more doubting your ability to recall rhetorical vocabulary; no more obsessing over the worst score you ever earned on an essay. And no more saying, to anyone, anywhere, at anytime, “I’m going to suck on this exam” or “I’m never going to pass.”

No groaning about the practice tests. No moaning about the studying.

You have to be brave to take the AP class. You have to be strong to take the AP exam. But most important of all, in order to be successful in the AP class or on the AP exam, you have to be confident.

When you drive to that exam on May 9, be thinking about how awesome you’re going to do—how you deserve to have this chance to showcase all the work you’ve done and the skills you’ve gained. And when the doubts show up, shut them up. Decisively. Immediately. Irrevocably.

To say it another way: Have confidence. Absolute confidence. Don’t let that little voice in your head—the voice that tells you you’re not good enough, that you’re out of your league, that you’re a phony and fraud—don’t let that little voice convince you of anything. Laugh at that little voice and then demolish it forever. Crush it. Decisively. Immediately. Irrevocably.

Get your head in the right place—and that place is always, to everyone, everywhere, at every moment: “I’m going put this exam away.” And then do it.