A Completely Different Game by Emma Hayes

Author:Emma Hayes [Emma Hayes with Michael Calvin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Published: 2024-07-23T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

Voices

A thirteen-year-old surfer has her left arm bitten off just below the shoulder by a fourteen-foot tiger shark. Twenty-six days later she competes on a custom-made board, in the waves off the Hawaiian island of Kauai. Within two years, she wins her first national title as a professional.

A girl abandoned by her parents due to radiation-related birth defects following the Chernobyl nuclear disaster eventually has both legs amputated above the knee and surgery on her innermost fingers so they can act as thumbs. She later wins seventeen medals in four sports across five Paralympic Games.

An ultramarathon runner wins a one-hundred-mile race despite going temporarily blind over the last twelve miles. She suffers from hallucinations and falls asleep on her feet for twenty-one minutes during another 240-mile race. She subsequently sets a world record, running 283.3 miles in fifty-six hours, fifty-two minutes, and twenty-nine seconds.

More men have walked on the moon than women have competed in the Vendée Globe, a twenty-three-thousand-mile solo yacht race round the world. A forty-nine-year-old woman is only the eighth female finisher in history. She confronts fear and loneliness, lack of sleep, and handles the world’s wildest seas while hauling sails well in excess of her bodyweight.

Most of us would be satisfied with being voted the greatest female athlete of all time. But winning six medals in four Olympic Games was merely the prelude to this five-time world champion inspiring a new generation through her philanthropic work in children’s education, racial equality, and women’s rights at the age of sixty.

Those women—Bethany Hamilton, Oksana Masters, Courtney Dauwalter, Pip Hare, and Jackie Joyner-Kersee—are just some of the voices you will hear in my dressing room. They each feature in videos no more than two minutes long designed to impart life lessons to my players.

Their stories are transcendent and personal but have a common theme of overcoming adversity, facing down fears, and responding to the challenge of being engaged in something bigger than themselves. In a world searching for meaning, they star in small but perfectly formed morality plays.

“I don’t want easy. Just possible.” This is Bethany Hamilton on her personal website, explaining her response to every surfer’s nightmare. There’s no bravado. She explains: “Courage doesn’t mean you don’t get afraid. Courage means you don’t let fear stop you. My fear of losing surfing was greater than my fear of sharks.”

She still sees beauty in the sleek killing machines, the monsters of Hollywood myth. She speaks of the meaning of being present, accepting her life for what it is, and making the most of it. She consciously cuts out what she calls “the constant barrage of distractions” and concentrates on the people and things that matter most to her.

Compassion gives her perspective. She could be speaking directly to my group when she says, “Courage, sacrifice, determination, commitment, toughness, heart, talent, guts. That’s what little girls are made of. The heck with sugar and spice.”

Celebrate your individualism. Leaders emerge from all sorts of challenging situations. Only you know how far you have come.

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