MASTERY

So I’m watching Sportscenter and a feature segment appears pointing out that the University of Connecticut (UCONN) Women’s basketball team has won 79 straight games (81 since the day I began writing this post). They haven’t lost since April 6, 2008. They’ve won 78 of 79 games during the streak by double-digits and out of 3,160 possible minutes, the Huskies have trailed for only 114. They have dominated to be sure and the success they have experienced goes virtually unrivaled in both men’s and women’s hoop.

In their most recent contest prior to the starting of this post, the ladies of UCONN defeated Holy Cross by 80 points 117-37, Holy Cow! Why were they playing Holy Cross in the first place? At any rate, the guy who coaches these remarkable women is named Geno Auriemma. In an era where coaches leave loyal fan bases to chase dream jobs and public school teaching gigs are no longer a dime-a-dozen, Auriemma is beginning his 26th season. He is the all-time winningest coach in UCONN history at nearly 86 percent. Who wins 86 percent of their games over a quarter of a century of grueling Division I seasons? While coaches and players dream of putting it all together to win a championship, Auriemma has done it seven times. And despite his rare air, coach Auriemma epitomizes the goal of most of the “driven” people in our world today – to be better than…

When you think of Women’s college basketball, three perennial powers come to mind: UCONN, Stanford and Tennessee. All make annual trips to the national tournament and all expect to be dominant and indisputable. But then, of late, schools like Baylor have entered the mix with their 6’8″ phenom Brittany Griner. And of course Rutgers is a well coached squad. But at day’s end, are more schools like the elites or more similar to Oregon State who hired Scott Rueck formerly of George Fox University to come in and deposit more than just basketball into the lives of his young athletes? I think the latter. Somewhere along the line we humans become obsessed with comparison but we’re not born that way. In the first four years of life we learn and apply incredulous amounts of information. If we are not raised in abusive environments, every mastery is celebrated from language acquisition to walking to tinkering with golf clubs we might have tried to eat just one year earlier. Mastery is enough to merit a sense of accomplishment. But something changes. Mastery and application of skills ceases to have importance. Coach Auriemma  seems like a humble dude. Rather than want his seven titles, maybe we should want the strength it took to remain faithful to preparation for the 10 years before he ever won his first title. Could winning simply be the byproduct of mastery?