Monday, August 2, 2010
The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com
The unsung heroes of the pine
7
People always debate the high-
est-pressure position on
sports team. Most sports have
a more or less con-
sensus answer - for
hockey, the goalie;
for football, the
quarterback; for
volleyball, the set-
ter. But the answer
is actually the same
for all sports - it's COURTNEY
the benchwarmer. FLETCHER
There are no arti-
cles written about them, no glory, no
recognition and, most of the time, fans
don't even know who they are. But
what the outside world fails to recog-
nize is that without these crucial play-
ers, no team could be successful.
I found myself in this undesirable
position during my freshman year.
I had been a starter on every team I
had ever played since I was 13. Going
from a position of glory to a position
of anonymity was one of the hard-
est things I went through. It's really
easy to get excited about practice and
working hard when you see games
on the weekend as the reward. But
as a benchwarmer, you go to practice
every day, work just as hard and put
forth the same effort as your team-
mates, and your reward is to watch.
And then, on top of watching, you
have to cheer on your teammates, be
supportive and then put on a happy
face. To a newly benched player, this
appears to be a lackluster reward for
your hard work.
The mental aspect of being a
benchwarmer is definitely the hard-
est part of the position. Every person
on the team has the ability to go to
practice and give it their all, day in
and day out. But for a benchwarmer,
it's about both doing that every week
and coming up short week after week.
Mentally, you have to tell yourselfthat,
you're preparing to play against some
of the best competition in the nation.
But, as each week goes by, the chances
of that happeningbecome smaller and
smaller. When the game does come
around, you can't check out and not
pay attention. You have to be men-
tally invested in the match and know
what's going on in case your name is
actually called.
Playing in a game actually releas-
es a lot of mental stress and anxiety
built up during practice. But if you
don't get to play, you experience the
same stress and anxiety without the
release and satisfaction that you con-
tributed to the win or loss.
Whatanyplayeronateammustreal-
ize - starter or benchwarmer - is that
every single player is crucial to ateam's
success. Competition in practice is one
of the driving forces behind players
improving. It's easy to be complacent
when you have a solid lock on your
starting spot. But if there's another
player nipping at their heels, that com-
placency turns into competition and a
drive to perform at your best. The real
source of a team's overall improvement
during practice comes from the people
who don't play at all. The non-starting
players must raise their own level of
play and challenge starters. The higher
the level of competition is in the gym,
the more successful the team is going
to be duringactual games.
People always talk about those who
graduated and who will fill their role.
But it's the ones people don't talk about
that may actually carry a bigger role.
Cassie Petoskey was the volleyball
team's leader among non-starters this
past year. Cassie set the standard for
contributing even while not playing.
Every time we competed, her goal was
not to challenge the other side, but to
beat them - and badly. Cassie knew
she was notgoing to see a lot of playing
time, but her integrity and character
held a lot of other players from going
down a path of self-pity. She united
the benchwarmers without separating
them from the team. That takes a spe-
cial kind of person, and that is going to
be hard to replace this upcoming year.
Benchwarmers
play a crucial role
in team success.
Nobody plays a sport so that they
can practice - they practice so they
can play. Unfortunately, it doesn't
always work out that way. There will
always be starters and benchwarm-
ers. But it's the mentality, attitude and
work ethic of the benchwarmers that
make the good teams great.
- Courtney Fletcher can be
reached at fletchco@umich.edu.
The real environmental disaster
ast week, congressional
leaders gave up on stopping
climate change for the fors-
eeable future.
The U.S. Con-
gress dropped all
forms of a cap on
carbon emissions
from its pending
energy bill.
In a nasty
irony that would NICHOLAS
find itself at home CLIFT
on a bad reality
show, around the
time Senate Majority Leader Harry
Reid (D-Nev.) was explaining that
he didn't have the votes for a carbon
cap, the National Oceanic and Atmo-
spheric Administration was releas-
ing its annual State of the Climate
Report. In the report, more than 300
scientists in 48 countries confirmed
that the last decade was the warmest
on record, continuing a long-standing
upward trend in global temperature.
Like NASA, the National Academy
of Sciences, the American Associa-
tion for the Advancement of Science
and the United States Global Change
Research Program, NOAA again
reminded us how startlingly real cli-
mate change is.
I've been campaigning for America
to fight global warming for a while. It
was the hope of finally taking steps to
combat climate change that had me so
passionate about voting for President
Barack Obama in 2008. Accordingly,
the loss of congressional support for
combating climate change is tough
for me to swallow. But my sense of
annoyance over last week's events
must be nothing like the sense of
annoyance felt by scientists who have
studied the climate their entire life
yet continue to be ignored.
Among other obstacles for scien-
tists, you may remember "Climat-
egate." E-mails hacked from a server
at the University of East Anglia were
spun by some as proof of a conspiracy
among scientists to dupe the public
on global warming. Around the same
time, the findings of the Intergov-
ernmental Panel on Climate Change
came under fire for a prediction
about glacial melting that proved to
be misinformed.
Though the scientists at East
Anglia and the IPCC have since been
exonerated by multiple independent
investigations, the stories fueled an
already thick atmosphere of misin-
formation. The American people are
famous for their fierce independence
- namely, their tendency to distrust
authority and those who call them-
selves "experts." For scientists every-
where, these "scandals" shook the
already shaky confidence the public
has in the scientific establishment.
The $175 million dollars spent on lob-
bying by the oil and gas industries last
year alone, as reported by OpenSe-
crets.org, didn't help the atmosphere
of misinformation either.
When the crisis of public faith was
near its worst, Natalia Andronova,
an IPCC contributor and climate
researcher in the University's Depart-
ment of Atmospheric, Oceanic and
Space Sciences, expressed to me her
imperturbable faith in the ability of
the general public to ultimately get
things right. "The public really wants
to know what is right, what is wrong,"
she assured me. She felt confident
that, given accurate information,
Americans would make wise deci-
sions concerning the climate.
But while I respect Andronova's
confidence in the public, I'm both-
ered by the fact that the public does
not reciprocate her confidence. The
situation is so ridiculous it's almost
comical: Dr. Andronova has dedicat-
ed her career to studying the climate.
As I sat across from her in her office,
she told me that there is consen-
sus among climate researchers that
humans are affecting the climate.
She wasn't deceptive. She was simply
a kind lady trying to get a skeptical
public to believe her. I trust her judg-
ment and the judgment of thousands
of other climate scientists across the
world. Yet many non-scientists insist
they know better, usually because it
feels momentarily cold outside.
It's worth acknowledging that,
while Harry Reid's new bill doesn't
have carbon caps, it does have some
provisions for encouraging energy
efficiency, and it changes federal
regulation of offshore drilling. It's
also an epic example of winning the
battle but losing the war. We think
the problem which warrants action is
a leak. We call it the worst environ-
mental disaster in our nation's his-
tory. Meanwhile, the populations of
phytoplankton, microscopic plants at
the very base of all life in the oceans,
are down 40 percent - not from
leaked oil, but from global warming.
It's the result of a slow population
drop that scientists started seeing 50
years ago.
Climate change is
too dangerous for
Congress to ignore.
And it's an ominous sign of what's
to come. If phytoplankton goes,
ocean life collapses.
Chastising BP and plugging the oil
leak are all well and good. But now is
not the time for shortsightedness in
Congress. In addressingthe immediate
problem of the oil spill, we're treating a
small symptom of using fossil fuels for
energy. Meanwhile, an unimaginably
more serious disaster closes in - one
that will be far more costly to our soci-
ety and planet if left unchecked.
- Nicholas Clift can be
reached at nclift@umich.edu.
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