Family…
Looking at the returning players this year, I asked myself a serious question. How am I, the only senior, going to help make this team successful? This question is very important to me because this is my last year here at Wabash and like every senior I want it to be the most memorable. I realized very quickly that this isn’t going to be an easy task. We only have 11 players returning and only five of us have significant experience. To make this an even bigger challenge one of our returning starters is only going to be with us for about nine games. So in looking at this situation it is easy to see that things aren’t going to be easy.
The first thing I decided was that I was going to look at this situation as an opportunity not a problem. This is an opportunity to surprise a lot of people this year, an opportunity to work on my leadership skills as well as the leadership skills of my teammates, an opportunity to make this team the closest team I have ever been apart of, an opportunity to become a better basketball player and a better teammate, an opportunity to have a lot fun, and my last opportunity to play basketball for an organized team.
The next thing I realized is that we are going to have to rely on some players that have little or no varsity or even college experience. The hardest thing about new, inexperienced players is not so much that they aren’t talented, it is more that they feel overwhelmed, because not only are they having to deal with a higher level of competition but they are dealing with playing for a new team, with new players, players that have played together before and understand each other. How does one tackle this challenge of making the newer players comfortable enough so where all they have to worry about is playing the game that they love?
For me the answer was simple, we have to become a family, we have to become one, we have to embrace the motto, “All for One and One for All.” Every player on our team has to buy into the system and be unselfish for this team to be successful. Sure, we have talent coming back, and we have an outstanding freshman class, but “A strong team beats a group of really talented individuals”. So that is exactly what we are doing, we are becoming a family, we are working out together as a team along with some other students on campus who are interested in basketball. We have created a “Full Value Contract” of how we are going to live our lives for the next year and how we are holding ourselves and teammates accountable. We don’t care if a freshman is telling an upperclassman to work harder or to go to class, or to be on time. Its ok, we are a team, a family.
The last thing I want to stress to my new family is the importance of personal leadership. There are two kinds of leadership, positional and personal. I have positional leadership right now because I am senior. However, every single person can have personal leadership. Personal leadership comes from making the right decision every time. It also comes from the understanding that he can and will make a difference on this basketball team. Whether it is scoring points or working there butts off everyday making the players that do score the points better. Whether they are the ones with the ball in their hands on game day or they are the one cheering on the person with a ball. Every single person in this family will have an impact. The last thing personal leadership comes from is having a good attitude, if everyone has a positive attitude about this team and this family, then we are going to be successful.
I am truly excited about this season, it is going to unforgettable. We are going to have so much fun and play so much hard nosed in your face Wabash Basketball that we are going to win a lot of games. This season we are going to give the Chadwick Crazies something to cheer about, all while becoming a closely nit family who plays for the name on the front of the jersey not the one on the back.
WABASH ALWAYS FIGHTS!
Ryan Stephens
(Ryan is a 6'8 senior from Zionsville, IN)