Monday Musings on Sports – Be ready to try something new…failure teaches more than success!

It’s another Monday…another opportunity to think aloud about how I got where I am today in sports: those personal things that put me on track (or off it, sometimes!) and pointed in the direction I’m following to date. ?I spoke last week about staying the course through thick and thin, the people that come into your life at different times to provide proof of why you should or shouldn’t do what you are about to embark on, the team or teams you will need to keep you on the straight and narrow and help you get over the line.

Your crew or crews are very important, but a key step on the journey is the decision to even embark on said journey. A Chinese proverb says, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with just one step”, so if you don’t start moving, you’re unlikely to get to the journey’s end. You have to buy that ticket if you hope to win the lottery! Simple? It should be, but its not that easy for many. The fear of failure makes many people take the line of least resistance and stay in their comfort zone, without chasing their dreams. The irony though is that failure is one of the best teachers for improvement and no one should be afraid to try something new because they don’t want to fail.

My journey into various areas of sports has been marked by several failures starting from my school days, but I can count those failures as learning curves towards my successes because I was never afraid to try something new, starting from a very young age, and there are distinct periods of my life where the willingness to try new things or acquire new skill sets served me well. There are so many experiences that I remember from way back in secondary school, right up to now and each one of them had its own lessons from which I learnt and which also improved me for the next stage. I’ll just recount a couple of them that one way or the other propelled me to the next level of my sports journey – as an athlete, an administrator, team owner, a sports analyst, TV presenter, management / marketing consultant and now change management practitioner in the sports development space.

The first one today goes back to my first year in secondary school. Remember in my first article I mentioned that I learned to play table tennis on the streets as a primary school kid, playing and beating the neighbourhood boys. I got into secondary school and during our weekend sports activities, I played table tennis with our seniors and kind of held my own, so one of the seniors in the Upper 6th Form who was quite good at the game, put my name down for the OMO Table Tennis Championships that was taking place in Rowe Park, Lagos. I had never played in a competition before, how much more a national championships, but I said, “Hey, what’s the big deal? Is it not this same table tennis? No problem!”…and off we went to Rowe Park.

That was the day I knew how popular table tennis was as a street game in Lagos....it still is today! I had never seen so many players gathered in one place, smashing tennis balls all over several tables placed in the hall! The noise level before, during and after matches was unbelievable! My match was finally called and I found myself facing a slightly older girl who proceeded to wipe me off the table with a merciless beating! Not sure I got a point on the scoreboard. A huge reality check for my sheltered table tennis skills and one of the incidents that convinced me that solo sports were not for me, and if I had to play a solo sport I must be prepared to put in the hard work required to get as close to the top as possible. This includes getting embedded in the sport’s ecosystem, knowing the players, understanding the competitions and generally pushing beyond any narrow vision of the game that I had, to be as good as the best in the game.

The second experience enabled me to put into practice the resolutions at the back of my mind after my table tennis whitewash. This involved my foray as a squash player, a sport I picked up in my final year in the university. I had taken a holiday in England during my second year summer vacation and stayed far longer than I thought I would. Coming back to school, I had put on quite a lot of weight and wanted to lose the unwanted pounds quickly. I had played badminton for the school as part of the doubles team but I didn’t feel badminton was going to help lose the weight as quickly as I wanted, Lord knows why I thought so. Someone suggested squash because of its intense nature but I didn’t really have that much of a clue how it was played, didn’t know any squash players either. By chance I went to visit an older friend in his office and mentioned that I was looking to pick up squash. Another friend of his happened to be there and he was a squash player, so he offered to show me if I would show up at the courts a couple of days later. I didn’t have a racquet but that was not a problem…there was always a spare one, so off I went. I thought I would get a gentle introduction to the game of squash…nothing doing! I was invited into the court, hit the ball a few times to show I had reasonable hand-eye coordination…and bam!...a game was called…with scoring and all! I didn’t even know how squash games were scored. Got beaten black and blue!

However, this time, I decided not to throw in the towel after this spectacular beating. Maybe because it was by an older person, so I didn’t quite feel the loss of face I felt at been beaten by a girl not much older than me in the table tennis experience. I decided to devote the time needed to become a good player, playing at the popular Eagle Club squash courts 3 times a week at first, then practically every day, such that in 4 months I went from a complete novice to playing for Unilag at NUGA Games in Zaria, where our team was narrowly beaten to the finals by University of Ibadan. ?I also started playing in competitions, winning a Team Silver Medal for Lagos State in National Sports Festival in 1986 before becoming an administrator on the board of the Nigeria Squash Federation and serving as Tournament Director for 2 years for the Federation’s international tournaments. In between I also won a host of trophies as a member of Ikoyi Club Squash section. All because I wanted to lose some weight!

Squash taught me tenacity. Its fast pace taught me how to turn on a dime as far as decision making is concerned. The closeness to your opponent in that small space teaches how to be nimble and accommodating (squash and racquetball are the only solo sports where you play side by side with your opponent – makes for some interesting near clashes), but above all else, squash taught me what it takes to get to the top – start by trying and don’t be afraid to fail, then working your socks off to get beyond your lack of ability or skill, till you get to the top. Squash also put me on the path of administration and management and I was lucky to have some very interesting co-travellers who were concerned about growing the sport…but more on that some other Monday.

Next Monday I’ll talk about a couple of other times that something I tried led me down another area of sports that somehow navigated me to where I stand today - working with a like-minded team of professionals trying to chart a course for the business and industry of sports, across Nigeria and Africa. The willingness to try new strategies, explore new vistas and engage across sectoral groups, not fearing if we fail in some of our endeavours, and the tenacity to keep going despite the odds, all come from taking that first step – just start!?

Have a great week at work …and don’t be afraid to try new things! The world is your oyster…waiting to be discovered!