A Girl’s Perspective: Hard Work vs. Competitiveness

My soccer coach emailed me and my team a video of Duke Women’s Basketball Coach Kara Lawson’s pre-training speech. As I watched it I had one of those moments in my life where I really understood the importance of the lessons others are trying to share to help cultivate my personal growth.

My parents have always asked me to do a self-assessment of how I thought I did after every practice, game, or tournament. They would ask what I learned, what I did well on, what I need to work on, and if I had fun. Then, the last question they decided to add to this post-play script over the last two years is, “Did you compete,” and, “did I earn my spot on the team today?”

This brings me to how Coach Kara is right, hard work is definitely different than competing. Hard work requires effort, even extreme effort, but so does competing. But hard work doesn’t automatically mean striving for improvement in my skillset and development like competing does.

I wanted to take the time to thank my coach for sharing Kara Lawson’s speech and thank Coach Kara for reminding me of the importance of my dreams and competing! Here’s what I learned from the speech:

The Definition of Hard Work

Hard work is the action of applying a great deal of effort or endurance. Hard work builds character, contributes to success, and promotes happiness. But does hard work alone win games? The answer I found is no.

The Definition of Competitiveness

Having a supreme level of concentration, which is the innate ability to get into the zone where the athlete switches on a mental state of total focus that allows them to channel all their skills and ability into competing. This brings superior situational awareness, and perhaps most importantly, it helps the athlete defeat the odds when on the brink of losing.

Being committed to excellence and doing whatever it takes to be the best is the key ingredient to success. The kinds of athletes that achieve the highest levels of sporting success make it happen through a relentless and lifelong dedication to perfecting their training.

Competitiveness is the desire, motivation, and enduring passion to make things happen, regardless of the ups and downs and challenges you face. It’s the lifelong desire and passion that never waned, and the motivation and drive to excel that is almost genetically ingrained in your DNA.

It’s the inherent need to work on deficiencies but crucially, rather than seeing them as weaknesses, they are golden opportunities for self-improvement.

Competitiveness is having a ton of grit, a steely inner strength, and an unstoppable, unshakable faith in being numero uno.

Competitiveness Applied

A recent example of this for me personally was when I competed at a Keeper Wars tournament. I had been training four to five times a week for a few months with my keeper coach. Then it was tournament time.

During the tournament, I started to realize that I wasn’t really tapping into everything I had. To be honest, I wasn’t very satisfied with myself and my level of play. At each match, the scores between me and my competitor were becoming closer. I knew I needed to dig deeper and channel everything I had. I wanted a shoutout, I wanted my upper 90 dives to be perfection, and I wanted to use new moves I was just starting to try in practice.

I cannot get better if I shy away from challenges and play it safe. I wanted to walk off that pitch knowing I truly completed. I could immediately tell the difference when I made this conscious decision to turn my compete switch on! My body was trying to tell me I needed to throw up, I was becoming gassed, my legs were shaking, I was breathing like I had the wind knocked out of me, and in this moment I realized I was now competing.

I was there to be the best athlete I could be, not for my parents, not for my coach, but for me. I wanted this so bad I couldn’t think of anything else. I started to also throw in a few side volleys – which keepers my age (12) do not typically do yet – and I scored each one. It was a long weekend of competition, but in the end, I won all of the 10 matches I played, including the championship game. It was all worth it and I now have all the game footage and stats to help me improve and compete at the next match.

In conclusion, as Michael Jordan said, “some people want it to happen, some wish it would happen, others make it happen.”

Featured Image via @20KaraLawson on Instagram

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