Pressure

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Perspective:

Pressure

It was a pretty good holiday break for the Cobbers. The hockey team won a tournament in Minneapolis. The men's basketball team won their holiday tournament here. And the Lady Cobber basketball team kicked off the new year with an impressive win at St. Olaf.

And all this took place amid pressure. Pressure to win. Pressure to do a job well.

There is a lot of sensitivity these days to the concept of pressure. Pressure has gotten a bad name. Pressuring kids for good grades is bad. The pressure to succeed is thought, by many, to be bad for fragile psyches. The pressure athletes face under the microscope of public scrutiny is criticized as both harsh and misplaced. "Don't worry, be happy" has become pop theology.

Baloney.

We worry so much about how to avoid pressure and challenges that we fail to find out how much we can achieve. Pressure doesn't crush us, it allows us to rise to another level. When we deprive our children of pressure to do better we deprive them of a great deal. It has become so fashionable to say "lighten up" that we forget that that is when races are lost and failure occurs. That is true in trying to win games or find truth or secure justice or feed hungry people. In our society, so materially rich by world standards, the temptation to avoid life's traditional pressures can be both thoroughly alluring and affordable. In a world filled with parents under pressure every day to feed their hungry children, we pompously debate whether college freshmen can stand the rigors of 12 credit hours of classes plus a couple hours each day for athletic pursuits.

Our collective failing, most often, is not in asking too much of young people. It is in asking too little. Within the narrow confines of Concordia athletics, as at most schools, there is an ever-present pressure to win. Not brutal, mind you, but there.

The long winning tradition of the football and women's basketball teams set a standard by which coaches and players in other sports inevitably get measured. And the Cobber football and women's basketball programs get measured by the very standards they have set.

One can quibble about the "fairness" of such pressure. But we should also be hesitant when we begin to defend mediocrity. Appeasing childish and short-sighted desires for less pressure and avoidance of life's responsibilities brings little more than temporary popularity for coaches and teachers. And it denies the student-athletes of the opportunity to find their untapped reservoirs of energy and talent.

The pressure put on young people to win games is not on the same plane as the pressure on a parent to feed a family or survive a disaster. And we should obviously be careful not to confuse games with life's more serious challenges. But calling on young people to work harder, live and play less selfishly, and stand up to pressure is not a bad way to prepare young people for those more serious challenges.

These pages are maintained by Jerry Pyle pyle@cord.edu. These articles are copyrighted © and may not be published or reproduced without the express permission of Jerry Pyle.

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