It's All in Your Head

“It doesn’t count if you’re already planning your defeat,” Chris said cautiously. The four boys, Evan, Calan, Owain, and Chris were all standing in the viewing area of the curling club, warming up for their quarterfinal game. They’d scraped by the round-robin with a win/loss record just good enough to get themselves into the final, and were facing a team of older juniors. Calan has a track record of getting in his head, and it usually leads to him not playing well. The four boys are sitting on the carpet in the lobby, gazing out longingly and nervously at the ice shed, knowing the challenge that lies ahead. The boys have been playing well, curling over eighty percent in all their games so far, but the catch is always their mental game. If they get in their heads, like all sports, they’ll lose their confidence. 

The team dynamic has always worked out for the boys as well, they all know their jobs on the team and what they have to do to support one another. Chris throws first and hangs out with Calan for his shots at the end of an end. He’s the joker on the team, the one that’s the most mentally resilient, and his job is to keep the rest of the boys out of their heads. Owain throws second, his job is to make shots and work hard. Evan throws third, his job is almost the same as Owain’s, with a little bit of mental support, helping Chris out. Calan, the strongest thrower on the team, has to make his shots to win games. The whole team’s job is to keep him out of his head, and he’s already started here before the game.

As the boys continue their warm-up, they’re all preparing themselves for the game. They stretch, then they have a short talk with their coach, Craig.

“Alright boys, play like you can,” he says, confidently. He always says this before the game, it’s become one of his phrases the team knows well. Inside everyone’s heads, the nerves are kicking in. These guys are the Nova Scotia provincial champs, they’re gonna be tough, and the boys are going to need to bring their best. The short practice before the game begins, and the four boys take some slides and throw some rocks to get a feel for the ice. After their time is done, the opponent goes out to the ice and starts their run. They’re all at least six feet tall, and out there on the ice, they look quite menacing. They’re all at least three years older than the oldest on the boys’ team, Evan, with the age gap being as large as seven years to the youngest. It’s incredibly hard not to get in your head; they can throw the rocks so hard out there, it’s hard to hide anywhere from them.

As the boys watch the practice, they make some remarks about the ice, and some light mocks of the team to try and lighten the pressure. Even though they’re all reacting differently, they’re all thinking the same thing: we gotta play well. Chris leans over to Calan and jokes around a little, Evan makes another remark about the opponent team to Owain that makes his eyebrows raise and he smirks.

While it feels different in the moment, they’ve played these guys before. In the bigger picture, if the boys played like they do in their club league when there’s no pressure, they would win everything, always. Craig always says, on the way home from games: “there’s nobody in this whole province that scares me; nobody’s unbeatable for us.” It always feels so good in the boys’ heads on the way home, if only they could get that kind of feeling in these pressure games like the one that’s about to start. They all know their roles, and the chemistry works well, but somehow the pressure at the moment still gets the nerves going. They make their way down to the ice to start the game, and they get going. 

The boys are playing alright, but it’s clear there are some nerves out there. A small miss here and a rock short there isn’t enough to lose the game, but it does keep it very close. Points go back and forth for both teams, as they make a few misses here and there as well: it’s clear it’s going to be close.

At last, Chris makes a breakthrough partway through the game; a song. It’s nothing serious, just a strange country song. At the moment though, it doesn’t matter. The game is close, coming to an end, and the boys need something to take the nerves away. Partway through the second last end, While Owain gets out his rock to throw the next shot, Chris makes his move. In his strange, quirky, farmer boy voice, he starts singing along to the chorus of the song. Evan and Owain, the two boys closest to him, recognize it instantly: it’s All my Friends are Drunk, and all the boys know the words. Everyone instantly collapses in laughter; it’s exactly what they needed. The mental game fades into the background, it’s all fun and games now. After Owain throws his shot, making it perfectly, Chris goes down the end where Calan is and does the same thing, with the same result. Calan’s nervous posture instantly collapses as he giggles like a four-year-old out there in the quarterfinal. 

The rest of that game went exactly as planned: the boys played like they could. Their mental game and posture were undefeatable, they were making everything out there. After the game, Craig had no idea what had happened, just that the boys had played an incredibly strong back half.

As far as the rest of the spiel goes, the pressure only went up, but not in their heads. At the start of every game, they blared that song in the locker room, had it running through their veins. No more defeats were planned, defeat wasn’t even on their minds. They went out in both their semifinal and final games and knocked their opponents out of the park, they were to win it all; success at last.