When Jade Schultz and Carlie Wagner got moved up to the varsity basketball team in 8th grade, I happened to wear a sweater vest on a home game day. Being the wonderful kids they are, they naturally mocked and ridiculed my “new look.”
They won that game. It just happened that I wore the sweater vest later in the season, and they also won that game. The following season, when I wore it for the home opener, those two hooligans laughed about it. Then they won again.
Since then, I have worn a sweater vest to school on home game days, and we haven’t lost a home game since.
Isn’t it amazing the superstitions we hold? Does my sweater vest do anything to help the girls’ basketball team win? Of course not, but it becomes a state of mind. I make sure I find Jade and Carlie every day when there’s a home game, just to make sure.
When I found out the Panthers were the home team for the state championship, I wasn’t taking any chances; the sweater vest had to go to Target Center. After all, as the commercial says, “It’s only crazy if it doesn’t work.”
Anyone ever involved in sports has had superstitions. In basketball, you probably had the same routine before every free throw, the same before an at bat in baseball or softball. What happened if you deviated from that routine? Well, if you didn’t have success, you knew what to blame.
Even in everyday life, many of us have these obsessive-compulsive tendencies. If our morning routine is ruptured in some way, we fear we’ll have a bad day. It shouldn’t matter if I shower before I eat breakfast, should it? Again, it’s all a state of mind.
I had an interesting set of occurrences this past week or so. The Friday of the sectional final basketball game, I was walking toward the offices of the Star Eagle when I noticed a penny on the sidewalk. Even though it was tails up, I picked it up and put it in my pocket. The girls demolished St. Peter to advance to state.
A funny thing happened on Wednesday, the day of the opening round of the state tournament. I had some students in Mankato at a writers’ conference. Walking through a parking lot, I saw a penny on the ground. Again, it was tails up, but I picked it up anyway, and I now had two pennies in my pocket. Despite some struggles in the first half, the Lady Panthers pulled away to a good win that night against Pelican Rapids.
Despite my best efforts looking, I didn’t find any pennies Friday or Saturday. In my superstitious mind, that explains why we had to work so hard to win those games. The funny thing is that on our way into the school Saturday evening to celebrate a state championship, my daughter noticed a penny lying on the sidewalk. Yup, tails up.
Why do we believe in these things? It’s probably because we really don’t have much control over a lot of things, and we feel this gives us a little more of that control. No matter how much we anguished over every lead change or official’s call we didn’t agree with, we couldn’t change what was happening on the floor. But by golly, I had my lucky pennies and my sweater vest, so we couldn’t lose! Yeah, that’s real control!
I feel like I’ve said so much the past week about our Lady Panther state champion basketball team. However, it deserves to be said again: these ladies represented NRHEG so well in so many ways. Not only are they the best team in the state, but they are the nicest, most respectful group of student-athletes you will find in the state as well. Congrats, girls, and thanks for letting us tag along for the ride!
Oh, and I may have to go shopping to expand my sweater vest selection for next year…
Word of the Week: This week’s word is schadenfreude, which is pleasure derived from the misfortune of others, as in, “NRHEG fans felt much schadenfreude when Braham’s leading scorer fouled out of the game and the Panthers won the state championship.” Impress your friends and confuse your enemies!