We lost. Badly.

you know i'm in shit when a post appears on this blog. this blog has become nothing more than a form of escape and release, a mannifestation of my innate escapist desires. and this is one such moment.

regardless of the outcome of our 3rd/4th placing match, the truth is we as the team of 2010 have failed in bringing back the gold. not to the school, screw the school; but for ourselves.

its not so much the loss as to how we lost, but then again its not so much the loss altogether but the different ways in which we dealt with it. more of that later.

i'm not going to dwell so much on the match itself, because i'm not particularly affected it. fair play to YJ, worthy winners, though at the back of my head i wonder how would the match have turned out had we brought our game to the court today. simply put, we were 2nd to nearly every 50-50 ball. and killed us it did.

could i have done anything more? a very fundamentalist argument would be that i should have trained harder and longer, such that i would be in a position of skill and composure that would be of use to the team on court. when i see shoujian having one of his off-days despite his best efforts, i very much wanted to jump in and do my bit, cover his ass on this off-day, or all our asses as a matter of fact. when i see kieran getting outpaced yet again, i wonder had i been of a higher playing standard, i would be the one saving his sorry ass for the umpteened time, in this most important of occasions, just as he has saved my ass umpteened times + 1, in countless other scenarios. i'm quite sure i would have been able to hold my own against such physical opponents. its just that i'm not good enough to warrant coach's trust, and coach's word is final, so there's that.

upon reflection, i've peaked at the wrong time. i'm only begining to feel really comfortable on the ball now, which is too late to warrant much playing time. in the past 2 weeks, my mentality in court would be best described as zen-esque. i've stopped doing stupid things in court, like running all over the place, attempting to beat my man and fail, mispassing and miscontrolling the ball. its only in these 1+, 2 weeks that i have felt the joy of playing as the sweeper, covering space behind my teammates, spreading the play from right to left and left to right. too little too late i guess.

coach criticised the whole lot of us benchers for not cheering hard enough. fair enough, i felt i had cheered louder and more frequent on other occasions. but to be fair to myself, i did do my part. perhaps i could have paced up and down behind the benches, giving my teammates encouraging pats on the backs. idk, if the idea sprung to me and knowing it would help, i would have done it. its just that i have never seen anyone, anywhere, on tv or otherwise, do that in any sport, hence this thought just didnt occur to me. but in fairness to coach, even though i was still cheering and encouraging my teammates in the 3rd period, mentally, i had already given up. idk, my mental state of mind could have betrayed my overt actions and sabotaged my team, however hard i tried to present the contrary.

oddly enough, however badly i wanted the title, even as a bencher, i didn't break down after the final buzzer. downcast and moody, yes, but not crying. i wasn't even stunned or shellshocked. it was only when saw kieran break down just before we warmed up that i teared a little, but that was it. for then.

when coach criticised the benchers, while feeling slightly aggrived and peeved inside, in truth, i wasn't feeling any levels of indignance that i would normally have perceived myself to be entitled to. guilty conscience perhaps.

we stretched, and huddled together as a team once more. kieran then said something about the benchers being unjustly criticised was the catalyst for me tearing once again. when shoujian said in tears about being proud to captain this team and how i had given my all through cheering was simply sensory overload. i broke down there and then.

for me, that moment was a very poignant reminder of the very reasons i joined floorball, and brought the process full circle. them wanting to join the cca in the first place was the reason i joined as well, i could easily have joined football or volleyball. i remember how desperate we were to make the team, along with theo, how we borrowed sticks from azmi and went to kieran's house the day before trials to practice. kieran and i especially had the most bonding time, born out of our desire to perfect our partnership, efforts that while i wouldn't say proved futile, proved irrelevant. how we fantasised of playing in a 4ker-line, another of those dreams that would go up in smoke.

kieran breaking down alone in the carpark didn't evoke that sense of catharsis in me. shoujian breaking down after kieran had done brought the 4k link clearly into my mind, reminded me that while we were fastened together by ambition, wanting to join, play and win so badly, it would be together that we would go down in sorrow, because we are equal in ambition.

daniel said that after this, i know that people do care about this and that i've got people who'll go through hell with me. the thing is, i've known this all along. i just needed a little reminder in their tears to release the floodgates that are my tears.