Paul Trethaway '13: Competitive sports have always been an integral part of my life. In high school, from the moment my motor control evolved to more than just walking and eating, I always wanted to play at the highest level possible. I wanted to get better, win trophies, be the best. I'm certainly not the best, and I'm not playing at the highest level possible.
At Dartmouth my athletic career has been much more relaxed, consisting of mostly intramural and club sports endeavors. This athletic laxity disturbed me initially. I was used to regimented practices, lifts, timed running tests and team diets, and suddenly all that structure was gone. Club lacrosse, as fun as it is, has little to no structure, but in going to practice there is still team camaraderie. And being on the ice during a club hockey game against a team of goons and having the opportunity to compete hard is worth just as much as winning a trophy. I'm not denying that winning is awesome, especially at an elite level, but eventually everyone has to dial it back a little. For some people that begins in college, as it did for me; for others, it will begin after a long career in professional sports.
But dialing back doesn't mean the end. It never ends. You might not win a huge trophy and bonus check for your Wednesday night beer league hockey game, but the camaraderie, the desire to improve, succeed and compete, and the ability to embrace adversity all exist in sports regardless of the level of intensity or structure of the team. This is what I've learned from club sports at Dartmouth. That, and having a keg on the bench during a game is encouraged.
Molly Wilson '13: When we showed up to practice last Tuesday, Lake Mascoma greeted us with a mirror image of the surrounding hills and a cloudless blue sky. I looked around, shrugging with my eyes and a press of my lips. The heat was heavy. A beautiful day for a swim, but without a breath of air to move a sailboat around in, practice was looking unlikely. A soft breeze appeared off the dock half an hour later, and we decided to launch our boats and give it a try. But when the breeze died back again and proved too light to run a drill, my skipper and I drifted and talked about his formal date, waiting for more wind to fill.
Then Mascoma suddenly changed her mood. A solid gust rolled down the lake, darkening the water and stiffening the hairs on the back of my neck, and within minutes the sun began receding behind a thick cloud. My skipper and I adjusted our sail settings for the heavier breeze in a matter of seconds and trimmed the sails. We hooked our feet under the straps and hiked to flatten the boat against the breeze. Although they were a little underdressed for the new conditions, our fleet of boats ran drills and practice races until our practice slot came to a close.
While there are a surplus of cliched sailing metaphors ("smooth sailing," "don't rock the boat") accessible to even the eternally landlocked individual, none touch on what I feel is the most valuable lesson I have learned through sailing, and the one that has guided me through my experience at Dartmouth. Sailing is a constant reminder to acknowledge what you cannot control, embrace it, and work with what you can control within that situation. This is does not mean being passive. In fact, it's quite the opposite: it's being productively active. It's being resourceful in looking around you and working with what you have to get where you want to be. It's being ready to ditch your expectations when something turns out differently than you imagined it would. It's also finding constants across external variations that allow you to be resilient. And in the turbulence of Dartmouth, where you jump in freshman year, race from on-term to off-term, question and requestion your values and goals and get shoved out into whatever the real world will bring, these constants are incredibly important.
