Brooklyn Tough
T — 3 days until our first game of the season. Our first game in 18 months. It’s 5am and 12 obnoxious alarm clocks going off all at the same time. Gradually, one after another, the sound of each alarm clock begins to relinquish, but before they all do, one of the lads gets the speakers pumping, blasting music for the whole building to hear and shouts — “we ready to get on it or what!?” An hour until training starts, it’s time to figure out how to get 12 people to the other end of Brooklyn to train at a five a side indoor facility as the snowstorm pummels the outdoor pitches. We somehow manage to squeeze in 12, 13, sometimes even 14 of the boys into two cars, as the subway isn’t running at silly o’clock during covid times. As we play a real-life game of tetris in the car, some of the boys are still confused, wondering if were coming home from a night out or heading to train in the height of a severe blizzard. As training in this indoor facility comes to end, we swap our playing kit for our snow boots and puffer jackets. With our shovels in one hand and our phone in the other, zoomed into virtual classes, we struggle our way through the snow to a nearby field which somewhat resonates a full-sized soccer pitch. We shovel for hours on end with a glimpse of optimism, hoping to perhaps get rid of enough snow, whereby maybe we could squeeze in a cheeky game of soccer tennis. After a couple of hours and a dodgy back, we call it a day and with no locker room, we then head towards the makeshift locker room, the infamous soccer house where 12 scrubby guys all hit the showers. Whilst it’s -20 degrees Celsius outside (-4 Fahrenheit), maybe the first 4 people will get warm showers on a good day and the rest — unlucky aye! Dirty kit all around the house as we have no laundry, but hey what does it matter in the end? Someone get the music going! In the disheveled state that we were in, there was nothing else to do but chuckle at the situation and just accept the circumstances 2 days before travelling out to our first competitive game in 18 months, having not even trained on a field yet. All this at the beginning of what was to become the most precious times of our life amidst the global pandemic.
Fast forward a few months and all of a sudden were playing under lights in North Carolina, still pinching ourselves at the thought of just being here at the NCAA tournament after winning the conference championship in front of our small Brooklyn community. We come back from being 1–0 down with a minute to go on the clock and winning 2–1 in the first round of the NCAA tournament against a team we were never expected to win against.
Fast forward another few days, and here’s an excerpt from an article by Jared Kelly, that was published on Indiana’ University’s Hoosier network, the number 3 seed at the NCAA tournament who ended runners up on the national stage and is arguably considered to be the most prestigious soccer program in U.S College soccer history.
“But Indiana’s second round match against St. Francis Brooklyn was no David versus Goliath showdown — that would be an understatement. Rather, it was one of college soccer’s premier programs against a team who doesn’t even have a home field to play on during the regular season.”
“Metaphorical sirens with red flashing lights were howling throughout Wilmington, North Carolina, Sunday evening. No, it wasn’t a firetruck. No, it wasn’t a police car. No, not even an ambulance. For the final 12 minutes of regulation, 20 minutes of overtime, and three minutes of penalty kicks the proverbial upset alert blared throughout UNCW Soccer Stadium for all 250 spectators to hear. Then, with one final sprawling save from sophomore goalkeeper Roman Celentano, the siren’s retreated as IU men’s soccer escaped with a 3–1 victory in penalty kicks over St. Francis Brooklyn.”
“Tonight, was survive and advance, IU head coach Todd Yeagley said.”
“Survive. It’s a word often tossed around in tournament settings when David gives Goliath a defiant pop in the mount, and then some.
Perhaps it wasn’t the fairytale ending that we were so close to, but we still defied all the odds and played ourselves into the school history books and made a small college in Brooklyn known on the national stage. Behind that success is a story of how a group of guys came together and committed to building a team culture with one common goal of achieving collective success, leading us to sharing the best times of our life together amidst a global pandemic.
Coming into the Season
Coming into the 2020/21 season we had no right to not only win our conference but end up in the second round of the NCAA tournament on paper. To give you a bit of context, out of the 187 D1 soccer programs in the U.S, St. Francis Brooklyn would be considered to be one of the smallest programs and in school history the last time St. Francis Brooklyn ever won a national tournament game was in 1978. This year, the preseason polls had us coming in at 5th out of 8 teams in conference play, not even earning a playoff spot. Heck we didn’t even have a field to train on until 2 days before our first conference game. We even lost our first game in overtime. However, from then on, the rest was history, and we were on the way to writing our own history…
It all started when we reported for preseason in Fall 2020 only to find out the season had been postponed to 2021 due to covid and had nothing on the agenda for the semester due to the pandemic. What we did have was the opportunity to connect as mates before anything putting our athlete identity to the side for a minute which can just be a façade at times. We entertained each other’s stories throughout the pandemic and how one another had changed their views on sport and life. It was a time of introspection, a time where we had the chance to reflect and appreciate what we always took for granted, being together in each other’s company as friends first, teammates second. As individuals we had so many unique challenges to deal with it, but it was a breath of fresh air to share a communal goal again with the lads.
The Soccer House
To give you some context into the dynamic of our interactions as teammates, the soccer house accommodates 12 of the boys, a diverse yet unique group with 11 different nationalities represented. In this group, everyone is wildly eccentric in their own unique ways. In one of the most absurd living situations where we can’t escape each other’s presence for a minute, you witness each other’s good and bad moments. We do everything together. We party together. We go to class together. We train together. Some of us even work together, so we get to see each other at our highest of peaks and lowest of troughs. We are exposed to each other’s flaws yet blessed by each other’s unconditional support and humbled by each other’s vulnerabilities. It all plays an incremental part in fostering a winning team culture, one that not only wins on the pitch but earns the admiration of people off the pitch. We are all so different, yet we all came together this year and had one thing in common which was our desire to succeed as a team and play for each other.
Challenges
It’s easy to say that were always going to stay positive but for the group of guys the return to play provided roadblock after roadblock and on paper we had no right to achieve what we had based on the circumstances. Only a genuine collective belief within the group and the disregard for external events provided us with the mentality that we could achieve anything we put our mind to, given we had some degree of direct control over the outcome. Unlike other D1 universities we don’t have a home field, so when covid hit and public fields were closed, we had nowhere to train. Instead, we trained on just about every unique type of surface you can think of. This ranged from various baseball fields, indoor gyms, beach volleyball courts, indoor volleyball courts to even just going for runs on the street masked up because there was nowhere else to train. We had a full tour of the city via the subway system whilst tuning in and out of zoom classes at school with dodgy internet connectivity. Not ideal when you don’t have unlimited data either. (Sorry Professor!) At first, we were only worried about the outcome, and became jittered by all the roadblocks that could affect our season. However, as events unfolded and we became accustomed to expecting the unexpected, we were romanticized by the process.
One roadblock we had was that we didn’t actually have access to locker rooms this year, which becomes even a bigger challenge when you have 12 guys living together in the same house. In the realm of team sports, in particular soccer, the locker room is a sacred place. It’s where we have the biggest laughs, it’s where passions boil over and we fight, where we blast the music and get geed for the game, where we see the freshman transform from being shy awkward kids in the corner to getting amongst the banter. After a win it’s a rave inside, after a loss you can hear a pin-drop but most importantly it’s where we establish the culture within the group. In order to rebuild our culture, we had to be innovative and transform the infamous soccer house which hosted 12 of us players this year into our locker room. We went to the electronics store and asked for the loudest speakers which could bring back the good vibes to our house. Sorry to our neighbors but sometimes you got to do what you got to do for the team. This became the locker room, and we caused a raucous but that’s what it takes to build a culture. After every win this was the place to be!
Building a Culture
To build a fostering team culture it takes courage for individuals to be vulnerable and create an environment for effective and open communication.
According to Oxford, culture can be defined as,
“the arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively.”
For us in the soccer team it’s how we develop internal values to guide our intentions and actions as a group. Unlike any other season, we talked to each other as mates by letting go of our attachment to the label of being a D1 student-athlete and surrendering ourselves from tying our identity to any external presence outside our group of friends. We let go of the expectations of receiving all the perks that comes along with being a D1 student-athlete and we understood that this actually held us back in the past. This was a key factor to our success.
Jay Shetty an award-winning storyteller and former monk, in his book “Think Like a Monk”, states,
“I’m an athlete, I’m a teacher. Sometimes this is just a useful way to jump-start a conversation with someone you’ve just met. But life is more meaningful when we define ourselves by our intentions rather than our achievements… Instead, if we live intentionally, we sustain a sense of purpose and meaning that isn’t tied to what we accomplish but who we are…”
By detaching ourselves from external labels we are able to focus on the core of what it means to be in a team and take in every moment and share the spoils with each other, being present. We empathized with each other’s unique struggles during the pandemic and talked about the things we learnt about ourselves, and we all agreed to build an environment around our group that was inclusive and determined to win the championship. We opened up to each other, showed our vulnerability as human beings and after hours of discussion in our backyard which is the only space in the house which can squeeze all 12 of us in at the same time, we had a toast on one goal — That we were going to win the championship this year regardless of what comes our way. That was said between the guys 6 months before our first official game and even the quintessential yet notorious Rat in our backyard witnessed it.
Brooklyn Tough
With adversity, comes opportunity, opportunity to overcome a challenge and come out the other side stronger collectively and individually. Prior to the season we collectively agreed to use the term “Brooklyn Tough” to describe the aura of our team’s characteristics and associate our identity with that instead seeing ourselves as ‘student-athletes’. Essentially what this did was flip the negative connotations associated with our circumstances and provide a way out for us to overcome adversity and instead use it to our advantage to gain a competitive advantage over our rivals. Instead of dwelling over what we didn’t have, we focused on how it gives us an edge over our competitors whilst just being grateful for what we do have. We all had the same struggles, so we just embraced it and had fun with it. We celebrated every little triumph — whether that be passing a covid test before game-day, scoring a goal on game-day or being told that our positive covid test in the team is actually a false positive.
So what does it mean to be Brooklyn Tough? It means that when teams come to our home and play on a pitch without a locker room, they get overwhelmed. They’re overwhelmed by the fact that they don’t have access to something which they think they have a right to in D1 college soccer and instead hide from the reality by being awed and distracted by the lower Manhattan skyline, hiding from the task at hand, which is to win a game of soccer. Meanwhile, our lads get on with the job and focus on leaving all our energy and passion into the game. Brooklyn Tough means, going away to universities with all the amazing facilities in the D1 realm and not being overwhelmed by the occasion. It means we go away to a big university, take our speakers off the bus, and onto the field and blast it as loud as we can while warming up, putting the stadium speakers to shame letting the other team know that we’ve already won the game before it’s started. Brooklyn Tough means not having a locker room, not having a place to shower, not having a pitch to train on but most importantly never using external factors as an excuse for our performance on the pitch and our presence off the pitch as human beings. We pride ourselves on staying grounded, diffusing the ego that comes along with being a D1 student-athlete, rather embrace our identity as just a bunch of young diverse kids having the time of their life in one of the greatest cities in the world and taking each moment as it comes. As Stoic Philosopher Marcus Aurelius once said,
“Ambition means tying your well-being to what other people say or do. Self-indulgence means tying it to the things that happen to you. Sanity means tying it to your own actions.”
Old words of wisdom, yet so relevant in regard to the challenges we face today. We didn’t pay much attention to what anyone else thought, what anyone else provided, nor what anyone expected, rather we believed in our intentions and actions as teammates.
When the first game came along away at Merrimack, we had no idea what to expect nor what it would feel like to play on a soccer field. With arguably the worst preparation in the league, in the pregame huddle the lads just agreed that whatever happens in this game and this season we’ll stick together, not letting our circumstances take over our joy of playing together for the first time in 18 months. We went down in double overtime, playing with 10 men for majority of the game, a kick in the gut, a sucker punch, gut wrenching however you may describe the feeling of dejection at the time, I have never seen a group of guys bounce back from a loss and move on to the next moment so swiftly. I vividly recall about 6 players scrapping on the 6-yard line trying to put their body on the line during a corner kick, but the ball just couldn’t be kept out of the goal. However, we held our heads high and knew that this moment was not the worst thing that has happened to us in the past 12 months and if any team had the character to bounce back, it was us. From here on the rest was history.
The season felt like a dream that no one wanted to wake up from. The key is to not look backwards, not look too far ahead into the future but be present in the moment and enjoy it! Enjoy hanging out and living with your best mates, laughing together, playing together and overcoming challenges on and off the field together. Enjoy sharing the spoils with your people and having a laugh after the game, putting a smile on the small communities around you whether it be the kids you coach during the week, or your mates who stream your games sending you messages of support after a big win. At the end of the day if we can’t enjoy each other’s company and appreciate the intricate things in life, all of a sudden trying to win a championship just for the sake of adding it to a tally becomes superficial and silly. Life is really that simple. You do something you love. You do it well with the support of your family and friends and then have a laugh with them.
A challenging year, nonetheless, however the reality is wherever you may find yourself in life, whether that be the workplace, a sporting environment, sometimes vulnerable conversations need to be had because nothing good comes from comfortable positions. Each person on this team has a unique story, a unique challenge and path which may be very different to mine and yours. But what we all have in common is resilience, passion and a willingness to put our teammates needs in front of oneself. Instead of worrying about the lack of facilities, we are grateful for what we have, which really is just the opportunity to play soccer with our mates. All the struggles, the emotions, the challenges were translated into passion and a presence on the pitch that could not be broken by any other team. We put our personal needs to the side and understood how the collective success is more important. My teammates win is my win. My teammates loss is my loss. We become better by making the people around us better. We serve each other, not to win a championship for the sake of it, but we serve each other to push ourselves to the limits, confront our fears and write our own story.