In the minds of many involved in sports writing there are two basic schools of thought, based on the work of two of the fathers of sports journalism, Grantland Rice and Ring Lardner.
Rice glorified the athlete and the contest and was often willfully naive in his perception of both. Thus, one school of sports journalism was born: the “Gee Whiz!” school.
Then along came a new breed that included many writers but was led and personified by Lardner. He saw this glorification as a false front and sought to turn the world of sports upside-down, exposing the coarse and unattractive nature of its underbelly. This has been coined the “Aw, Shucks!” school.
I fall squarely on the side of the former. I strive to maintain a level of skepticism necessary to cover the games in a way that is informative and thought-provoking, but I’m not looking to throw mud at anyone. I take true pleasure in sporting events and am amazed by acts of athleticism.
I saw that athleticism on Friday night when the Oregon volleyball team stepped onto the court against seventh-ranked US.
The night before, the Ducks lost in three games to UCLA. The Ducks seemed unsure
of themselves against the Bruins and, at
times, discouraged.
The coach and I had a conversation about two weeks prior to the UCLA match about the nature of the team’s focus, and how when things didn’t come easily, the team tended to lose focus to frustration.
I was concerned at what kind of character the team would show against USC after learning that things weren’t going to be “easy” in the Pac-10.
To my delight they played with a cohesiveness and competitive intensity that was inspirational. They brought the attack to USC and put the pressure on the team to make plays. The Women of Troy ended up making some of those plays and winning the match, but the attitude that the Ducks displayed was a breath of fresh air.
The first thing that Moore will tell you about the matches is that UCLA is just that much better than USC. Listen just a bit longer though and he’ll also tell you that the biggest difference in the result from one night to the next was aggression; attacking the other team instead of just keeping the ball in play. That’s what I mean when I say “competitive spirit.” When you get knocked down, you get back up and punch harder.
It would have been very easy after the disappointing loss to UCLA, given the tradition of futility in Duck volleyball, for the team to think to itself, “well, maybe we just aren’t quite there yet.” To lapse back into that losing attitude that can become ingrained in a program would be understandable, maybe even excusable.
Instead, this team understood that the level of play that was going to be necessary to compete against the top programs was a little higher than it expected or was used to, and it raised the intensity and focus to match it.
Obviously, no one will credit Moore with turning the program around until the Ducks make some noise in the Pac-10. But anyone who has been around the team at all this year knows that this program has turned a
corner. We haven’t seen the concrete, numerical evidence of it yet, but it’s there.