My experiences with sport life

In general from what I’ve noticed, I am a lot more comfortable with my environment when I go to my jiu jitsu class. I seem to get a long with the guys there a lot more (being the only female there), I connect better and there doesn’t seem to be any drama, whether that’s gossip or putting others down.

In field hockey though, I’m always a bit uncomfortable. I may not really like the people there, I’ll occasionally run into bickering, as I’ve noticed in the previous games I’ve gone to where an authoritative figure was expressing himself out loud saying that “there should be a code of conduct” or I would notice players arguing profusely with one of the referees.

The difference between a martial art setting and the one I experience at hockey is “respect.” In the martial art class, we bow to each other, shake hands and have a positive attitude. In hockey you get the occasion of, if a player doesn’t like something or worse yet if a “coach” doesn’t like something, they’ll start arguing madly at the referee.

In my mind, when this happens there is no respect there. It gives a bad example that others can do it too. I think that a person has the right to question what happened in the game, but in a calm respectful manner.

I was so turned off by my fall season of 2022 when I was going, well by a lot of things, that when one of the referees made a call, there was this guy who was literally arguing with the referee for like a minute long. There were also some scenarios where the experiences of either myself viewing something as an outsider, or if I was the one experiencing something myself, I felt, was inappropriate to where I felt like I should’ve just left and walked away.

It’s too much for someone like myself to be driving an hour or depending on traffic from where I am, an hour and a half to be driving that long and far to experience unpeaceful crap. I would do it anyways, even with my busy schedule, lack of training during the week, and dealing with a heavy mental load, because of my love for the game.

I have now come to expect an unfavorable attitude from the sport of field hockey, because it’s always been like this since I was 16 years old.

I’ll just name one example as there are many. When I was in high school, the lady who was coaching the team wrote a letter of complaint to USFHA when there was a tournament in Chula Vista when I was in the Futures program, saying that I was uncooperative and didn’t go to some dinner event with the team.

I didn’t even know there was a dinner event. My dad and I at the time, cause my dad took me to all of my field hockey practices and events growing up, thought it was really weird and didn’t understand what the letter was all about. I wish I had kept it and framed it haha. The idea of framing it is to not dwell on the negative experience, but to show that even with unfavorable situations, that you if you choose to rise and not quit, that even these things won’t get you down.

I feel that if you are going through some serious challenges and hardships in life like myself, that the sport of field hockey is not a good environment to be in, because it’s not going to help you grow mentally or help you to build the mental strength needed to help you in life. (I don’t think I really appreciate, even for a tad, if a person asks me “Why the F am I playing for another team? I mean this isn’t high school last time I checked, it’s just an adult league).

I believe that because of something like jiu jitsu, it has helped me to be better person and an athlete and helps me to deal with the stuff at field hockey today.

During the fall season, with the stuff on my mind, when I would make a mistake on the field, just blank out, which is not my usual thing to do, it was really upsetting when I had one person approach me, with anger and frustration on not doing what they wanted me to do, but in a way that I also found physically threatening.

I had never been approached like that before in the sport of field hockey, that I felt like if I didn’t respond, I don’t know how close they would’ve gotten to me because that person was already pretty close to me physically when I was approached during the game. Even though I understood that person’s frustration, how they approached me was not appropriate.

It took me a while to “get over it” mentally. Not because I was afraid to take the person down if I needed to, but it took me a while because I never had that happened to me before since I’ve been playing hockey this whole time.

I look at my jiu jitsu instructor and he has not once gotten angry or shown frustration toward any of his students. There is a humongous difference in how my jiu jitsu instructor teaches verses the actions that I’ve noticed with the one who approached me, who is also in the leadership position.

I’m not sure why I get to experience these negative experiences but I’ve learned to distance myself, and I’ve learned to just ignore the negativity, gossip, anything or anyone that makes me feel uncomfortable. I only focus on the people I do like, and the positive aspects of the sport only.

It’s important for me to be focused on what I’m doing. I wish I could train more, at least every other day, with consistency to help me toward the goals of being a great field hockey player. I have no need or interest for negative crap. What I want out of the sport, is to be in an environment where you respect your team mates, you respect your coach, that I am coachable, we can learn from each other, have a good positive attitude, and focus on skill set and hustle. Anything outside of that, no thank you.

There have been times too when I would go on social media and the things discussed were also, I felt were out of line. There was one time in regards to the discussion of supporting “body slamming,” and the importance of training with body slamming in the sport of field hockey.

I just thought it was absurd that I just left the group online. This wasn’t the first time I had left a field hockey social media group. The first one that I had left, had a lot to deal with ongoing complaints about what was wrong with the “political stuff”, to the point that I just left.

Although it’s important to address what’s wrong, it doesn’t help the situation to just complain and not provide a solution of what’s lacking in whatever organization. It’s like saying that you have a flat tire and to scream that you have a flat tire, but not do anything about it, giving others the opportunity to also do the same, and it’s not conducive.

Even though I’ve experienced a lot of negative experiences in the sport of field hockey, I’ve learned to now expect it, with the attitude in mind that if I focus on only on the positive, what I want from it, then something will blossom and I will find myself with more happiness within the sport life. I’m thankful for the friends I have made within the sport and I hope that I can contribute more in the near future.