by Ryan Maloney, assistant women's volleyball coach
I love getting a new book in the mail. It's like making a new friend. An opportunity for a relationship that could last a lifetime
When we got home from Geneseo Saturday evening, I saw Anson Dorrance's Training Soccer Champions sitting in the mailbox. Dorrance, the women's soccer coach at North Carolina, wrote this book before Tim Crothers penned Dorrance's biography, The Man Watching, which is still my favorite coaching book of all time. Training Soccer Champions, though, is widely considered a classic in the training of female athletes.
Skimming through the opening pages that night, I came across a passage Dorrance wrote titled, "Being Happy." It's so relevant I couldn't help but share it:
"When kids come to college, they come with a wonderful kind of idealism, and trying to be happy is at the top of their list. They have been given their freedom for the first time. And in their ambition to become happy, the typical freshman goes out the first couple nights and gets totally wasted.
They are free now, and they think a part of this wonderful freedom is to go out and stretch their limits. They think this is going to make them happy. But they discover quickly that getting drunk every night doesn't make you happy. Basically, it leaves you hung over and empty, and you really don't gain much from that kind of total freedom.
It's satisfying to work hard at something. It's satisfying to work hard at athletics. It's satisfying to compete and do your best, and those are the things that ultimately come back and give you a depth of feeling and depth of character. The process itself is not always that enjoyable, but at the end of the day, the people who have worked hard feel good about what they've accomplished. There is a satisfaction that feeds them.
There is a difference between fun and happiness. I think the most confused freshmen and sophomores we have believe happiness is stringing together a collection of fun environments. I once read that fun is something you enjoy while it is going on, but things that make you happy are what you appreciate once the event is finished. There are few environments where hard work and connecting personally are as deeply satisfying as in team sports. And if I have done my job properly, I think part of an undergraduate's evolution is they come to that conclusion before they graduate.
One thing that athletics does for people is give them that satisfaction before they genuinely understand what's going on." ~ Anson Dorrance