Lessons on Love and Loss: An Open Letter to My Team by A.J. Kohlhepp
April 25, 2015
The art of losing isn’t hard to master Though it may look like (write it!) like disaster. - Elizabeth Bishop
This squash season, more than any I can remember at Berkshire, was
marked by losses. The greatest losses we weathered had little to
do with the sport. Now that we have emerged from our long winter
season, I wanted to take some time to look back, to process what we
went through together and, I hope, to give us all some things to carry
with us as we move ahead.
In the opening weeks of the season, we lost a teammate. A gritty
competitor and an enthusiastic teammate, this Bear decided that she
could no longer negotiate the challenges of a varsity program at a
difficult time in her life. Her physical absence was apparent
from the day we came back from winter break; her spiritual absence was
harder to calculate or come to terms with. Her vacated position
opened up a roster spot for newer players, but her missing camaraderie
lingered till season’s end.
Just before the season’s end, of course, we were hit with another
personal loss, and this a permanent one to the whole school. Our
dean’s passing left us all stunned, and saddened, and uncertain how to
respond. I felt this loss acutely. He and I were the same
age and, despite very different backgrounds and job descriptions and
personal styles, shared a lot of the same values. He and I
struggled together a couple of years back to help one member of the
squash team with her premature departure from Berkshire, and we spoke
often about the work we undertook at this kind of school. Like
you, I hope to be able to carry on his legacy at Berkshire, to “keep
working” toward a better and stronger and fairer world, beginning one
class and one practice and one conversation at a time.
Our losses did not end with people. This season featured a whole
new sort of loss: we lost the 3:00 p.m. practice slot.
Although this may sound trivial, I think it actually had a deep and
lasting impact on our time together. With just one weekly
practice before dinner, we faced more and more court times in conflict
with other aspects of school life: science labs, group projects,
ACT tutors, you name it. We also lost fifteen minutes per
practice to accommodate the all-new girls’ thirds slot. Add these
small difficulties to the long cold slog of boarding school in winter
and the picture gets even bleaker.
As far as the squash itself, our match record sheet shows a fairly
serious drop off from recent seasons. We won five and lost
eleven, falling to teams we always lose to, like Greenwich and
Hotchkiss and Hopkins and Suffield, but we also to teams we often beat:
Miss Porter’s and Kingswood and Millbrook. The tough thing about those
defeats was not the number but the nature, as we dropped four by the
slimmest of margins: all 4-3 with multiple four- and five-gamers in the
mix. Solid showings against the weakest teams were not enough to
take the sting out of mediocre efforts against middling opponents.
You may protest, and rightly so, that winning isn’t the most important
thing. If you tell me that, then I am encouraged that you have
listened, and heard me correctly, on this topic. Winning is never the
most important objective in this environment. Instead, concepts
like resilience and teamwork and discipline and commitment are what we
strive for. There is a reason we put our Greek motto at the
bottom of practice plans and chant it before matches and tattoo it
(temporarily, I concede) on our forearms before New Englands. Our
commitment to arete – excellence – is what determines whether we have
been successful in our collective endeavor.
Because of quirks of the school calendar, we lost out on the chance to
play Nationals, which had been such a highlight of last year’s
campaign. Because of yet another snowstorm, we lost out on the
chance to play the Hopkins Tournament, the best single-day preparation
for New Englands (and a fun event in its own right). Once we
finally headed for New Englands, we got lost on the way to the host
school and, having found and seen the courts at Brooks, got lost again
on the way to the hotel.
But maybe the biggest loss of all was not external or quantifiable but
internal and incremental. Maybe I lost perspective somewhere
along the way. Because there was so much to treasure about this
season: a stellar double-header against Pomfret and Westminster;
a dominant webcast showing against Canterbury; impromptu dance parties
and travelling sound systems; so many spirited rallies in
practices and gripping games in challenges; a sledding practice and a
cookie party and a van full of laughs, with our Uggz in the ranch and
our smoothies on the floor: so many moments to cherish.
And then, on the final weekend of the season, some inspiring play and,
in the end, some winning. Then a long, white-knuckle drive home
that gave us four final hours together. I am glad for every snowy
minute though, to tell you the truth, I hope never to make a drive like
that again….
From the seniors who led this team with grace and a quiet, competitive
drive to the freshmen who stepped in way too high, way too early, and
still battled all season long; from the returning varsity players
who moved up from the bottom to embrace a starting role to the j.v.
trainees who proved that they belonged at the next level; from
the wonderful manager who helped us all improve while knowing nothing
about the sport to the postgraduate who picked up a racket for the
first time this November and ended up the seventh best at the school:
you all made this is a season to remember. Your collective joy, amidst
the many moments of sadness, is what I will hold onto. And it is this
that I hope you never lose.
