Competition: The Double-Edge Sword

We won our first game and I was not pleased. Players, fans and the press did not understand my displeasure, and I failed to reconcile their exuberance. This team believes it is a championship contender, but we struggled at home to beat the league’s worst team. We made numerous mistakes on offense and defense and were bailed out by timely three-point shooting. I could not celebrate a result we expected; I focused on the negatives, where we could improve, while the Swedes cheered the final score.

I went home and thought about my negativity and a quote by Dean Smith: “If you make every game life or death, you are going to die many deaths.” However, that is the competitiveness to which I am accustomed. I am no different than most Americans. America is a competitive society, and its competitiveness creates greatness. However, viewing America from afar, this competitiveness causes many of America’s ills.

So we won a game we maybe deserved to lose; with a week to prepare for the next opponent, a short celebration is normal, an acknowledgment of the team’s pre-season efforts and a boost to morale before going back to work at practice. If wins are not enjoyed, and losses presumably are worse, where is the fun in coaching? With this attitude, burnout occurs quickly. It’s the same devotion that manifests itself in the workplace as businessman work manically to close a deal, putting in eighty hour weeks. Is it worth it? Is something going to change between 5:00 PM and 7:00 AM to end the deal? Or, is it a case of relentless competitiveness and drive?

Even school is now a competition. While coaching in Los Angeles, parents worried about admissions to the right elementary schools because the right elementary school paved the way for the right high school and college. Grades inflate as schools compete to send its graduates to the best universities and standards lower at universities as universities save its 98+% graduation rates so it remains atop the best universities rankings.

Swedes cannot fathom my devotion to my alma mater or the importance of the college decision. They do not understand why some work a hundred hours a week. It is definitely a different world, but in a sense, the lack of competitiveness is refreshing. Since Swedes are not as pre-occupied with grades, they actually learn the material. A foreign concept in many American schools, students study for understanding, not to pass tests or quizzes or trick teachers into believing they really did the reading. I passed the AP US History exam as a junior in high school and found my knowledge of American history completely deficient compared to a social studies class in my high school in Sweden when I was an exchange student. I studied for tests, to get better grades than my peers so I could go to the best college, while they studied to learn about the causes of the Vietnam War and how it continues to affect modern society.

Toward the end of a practice, my players competed in a basic shooting drill: each team had to make five shots from five spots and the losers ran. Somehow, the drill’s competitive element did not register. In the States, if another team’s ball finds its way into a player’s path, he allows it to bounce away or somehow finds a way to accidentally get in the opponent’s way. With my team, players went out of their way to help other groups, even delaying the pass back to their teammate to assist the opposition.

Dumbfounded, I could not believe the lack of competitiveness. But, it is now what I expect here. My first taste of this camaraderie came at a practice game we played shortly after my arrival. I entered the lobby where our team prepared for the game and saw my players warming up with the opponent. Shortly after tip-off, one of my players and an opponent sat talking and laughing.

But, as I settle into life in Sweden, I wonder if the States’ competitive nature is as superior as we believe. Is it better to cheat to get an A in order to gain admittance to a prestigious university or to try and learn and possibly fail? Is it better to compete against everyone or work together? Do we often feel alienated from society because everything is a competition?

I believe the same competitiveness that elevates Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods and Pete Sampras to greatness drives business leaders like Bill Gates, Michael Dell and others. So, competitiveness creates companies that drive the economy; unfortunately, the same competitiveness causes fiascoes like Enron. So, we take the good with the bad and wonder if there might be a better way.