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. * LIKE WHAT YOU SEE HERE? Want to see more? Check out more from Daily columnists, additional viewpoints from students and more cartoons posted online throughout the week. Go to michigandaily.com and click on 'Opinion.' The Daily is looking for a diverse group of strong, passionate student writers to join the Editorial Board. E-mail aschiff@umich.edu for details.