You might think that playing on the National Team would be a
pretty awesome job. And you would be
correct. We get to put on the red, white
and blue and play in front of thousands of fans, to take pictures and sign
things for the very people that we’re working to represent and to do what we
love with people that we love. How cool
is that?
But the coolest parts of our job are often the ones that you
don’t even think about going in. While
we were in Hawaii they took us to the USS Paul Hamilton, an active Navy ship docked
in Pearl Harbor awaiting deployment in a few weeks.
We got to go to the bridge with the captain and hang out
with some of the crew. And the more I
listened to them talk the more I realized that the core of what they do and
what we do is fairly similar. Don’t get
me wrong, what they do is way more important and impressive and dangerous and
everything else. But the crew of a ship
is really a team that is operating in a high pressure situation. Every member has a role and needs to perform
in order for it to work. They have to
rely on each other, to learn quickly and to work efficiently as a unit They train hard so that when they get to the
real thing all they have to do is what they do every day. And they do that really well, which makes
them the best in the world. It’s a
pretty great example for us in what we’re trying to accomplish.
They were pretty excited to see us but I’m going to say we
were the ones who got the most out of the visit. As we walked up to the ship I saw a group of
crewmembers on the deck. I assumed they
were working until they saw us coming and started chanting
“U-S-A”
I’ve heard that chant quite a few times in my life by
now. And it really never gets old. But hearing it come from military men and
women on the deck of a Naval ship is probably going down as the greatest…getting
cheered on by the real Team USA.
No comments:
Post a Comment