The Yips and a Bodgy Swimsuit.

I was a bit of a tomboy growing up. For those who don’t know, a tomboy is a girl who displays ‘boyish’ traits, or engages in activities traditionally designated for boys (a barrier that is slowly but thankfully eroding). I remember being described as a tomboy, but I couldn’t tell you who labelled me so. I can’t recall, and it’s not important. Suffice to say, I loved sports. All kinds of sports. I was very active as a youngster. And it didn’t really matter what, I’d have a go. Football, cricket, skipping, running, pushbike riding, swimming… I enjoyed the lot.

In fact, I was in a swim team that won its event at a Victorian Technical Schools championship. I was the third swimmer in the 4X50 metre freestyle relay. (I’m not going to tell you about the swimsuit malfunction that happened during my leg of the race, and which I thankfully noticed and was able to rectify before climbing out of the pool.)

It was my first real success in any competitive sport. I was thirteen, and could imagine myself going all the way to becoming a professional athlete. Unfortunately, it wasn’t long after this victory that my family relocated from Victoria to Tasmania. As with the swimsuit malfunction, I’m not going to digress into the cumbersome details of what happened in those difficult years that followed, or why the sporting exploits of my parents’ teens became barely relevant.

It wasn’t until years later, in my thirties, that I learned of a local women’s Aussie rules football league. I had loved football as a child. It was, and is, after all, a hallowed institution in this country, no less worshipped than the Lord Almighty himself; particularly in Victoria, where the game’s illustrious history began.

Of course, Australian rules football is a particularly strenuous sport of immense skill. My childhood exuberance for the game did not translate to a fit thirty-five-year-old, nor to a competent one. My career was short-lived, and embarrassingly mediocre. The thing I remember most about my performance is kicking a point when I was only metres from goal, and accidentally ramming my fist into my own team mates eye socket during a scrum, which rendered it black by the time the game was done.

Fast forward to my cricketing career. Please.

I always fancied myself an all-rounder at primary school. That is, someone who can bat and bowl with relatively equal skill. As an adult in the nets, I felt this still to be true.

Team sports are, however, intimidating. There is always more to lose than one’s own self-respect. Your whole team relies on you to perform your best on the day. And although we were reminded at the beginning we weren’t ‘playing for sheep stations’, I was determined not to let others down. As a result, I took my role very seriously.

And then one day – during that fateful game on home soil– it happened. Unlike the swimsuit disaster of ‘87 (which occurred in my thirteenth year, and under water), this humiliation could not be hidden from view; could not be rectified before surfacing.

Imagine if you will, a bright, sunshiny day. It’s a game of T20, and the batter is at the crease. The fielders are well placed, and all eyes are on the bowler: me.

My bowling style was a mixed bag of spin and medium pace. I’m not sure which I was aiming for on this particular occasion, but as I hit the crease and brought my arm over my head, as I figured the time had arrived to let go of the ball and send it on its way down the pitch to the awaiting batter, that hard white nut failed to release in due time. For whatever reason my fingers would not unfurl, and instead of sailing down that steamrolled corridor to its intended target, the ball thumped into the ground only three feet from my toes. And then it sat there like a huge, curled-up woodlouse.

You can imagine my embarrassment. I don’t recall any reaction from either of the two teams (bar deathly silence, or um, crickets), and I recall no heckling from the sidelines. But I was monumentally embarrassed. The umpire called a ‘dead ball’, and despite my red-faced humiliation, I picked up said dead ball and went back to my mark. I shook off the incident and started my run. I once again hit the crease and brought my arm over my head in a grand sweeping motion, and once again the ball thumped into the latte-hued pitch at my feet. Not to be outdone, I shamed myself twice more in this fashion before the umpire finally put an end to my misery by calling the over.

I was mortified. Tears that had begun two deliveries prior, were now streaming without hinderance. I remember no derision, no jibing. My team mates were only sympathetic. But even if they had tried, their scorn that day could not have outperformed my own.

My confidence was shattered. Why couldn’t I do this thing when it mattered most, when I had been doing it over and again at training without issue? My teammates were depending on me, and I had turned into a useless crying mess on that ground.

The yips.

I had never heard of the yips until after I had experienced it in all its debilitating glory. Wikipedia defines the affliction in sports as:

“…a sudden and unexpected loss of ability to execute certain skills in experienced athletes.” Granted, I was no athlete, but I had been bowling a cricket and/or tennis ball since childhood.

Further: “In cricket, the yips applies mostly to bowlers. The affliction seems to involve bowlers having trouble releasing the ball at the end of their action.”

Wow. Spot on, Wiki!

ESPN cricinfo, in its Dummy’s Guide to ‘the yips’, says:

“‘Getting the yips’ is a phrase used to describe a (mostly) mental affliction that prevents sportsmen [and women, I’d like to add] from performing a repetitive task – such as bowling – in the presence of an audience.”

Ah. So, essentially stage fright…?

I was laid flat, evidently not by the judgment of others, not by teammates who decided they were better off without my subpar efforts on their behalf. I was undone by my own debilitating fear of failure.

I don’t recall that I bowled again after that day. But I didn’t stop playing. I batted and I fielded with the same determination that I take into any challenge.

What did it mean for my team going forward?

Nothing, as it turned out. It was the inaugural season for women’s cricket on the North West Coast, and our team won the premiership. I played one more season, and then dropped out.

Skip forward another eleven years. Although I haven’t played a team sport since, it occurs to me that I have been harangued by the yips in one form or another throughout my entire adult life. Fear of failure. Fear of judgment. Fear of humiliating myself in front of a crowd and being paralysed by it. It manifests in different ways, but it manifests just the same.

For example, I almost chose not publish this story. I almost decided it wasn’t good enough. And you know, maybe it isn’t. But the yips – the inability to let go in the face of an audience – has taught me a valuable lesson. THERE IS NO GREATER HINDERANCE TO OUR SUCCESS, NO COMPETITOR WE’LL FACE THAT WILL EVER BE AS FEARSOME, AS OUR OWN SELF-DOUBT.

My accomplishments since my sporting days have been modest, solo outings. My ideas on winning and losing have become somewhat nuanced with age, and I no longer set out to defeat anything other than my own limitations. My greatest self-imposed challenge has been to write my first novel, and many times during that three-year journey, the yips threatened. But somehow, I never gave in. Somehow, I never stopped believing. I shattered no records when my book was finally self-published, but I don’t recall a time in my life when my sense of accomplishment was greater.

I’ll finish by just saying this. It doesn’t matter whether you’re playing a team sport, or writing a book, or forming a garage band, or throwing a discus. You must:

Believe in yourself. Do not give up. Back yourself all the way.

And remember: first place is just one slot to be filled; winning is for us all.

Oh, and do stay away from bodgy swimsuits.

References:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yips

https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/a-dummy-s-guide-to-the-yips