Throughout the course of the 2012 season, MVNU junior pitcher Justin Brown will write a weekly blog about what is happening with the baseball team.

"Want vs. Execution" (posted on May 2, 2012)

Well, here we are...the conference tournament is now on us. This week is one of the main reasons why you invest all the time year-round to excel in this sport. When you are doing the early morning lifts in the offseason, the sprints in the winter and the tedious, repetitive drills in early spring, the conference tournament is what looms in the back of your mind. This is going to be one of the most exciting, mentally demanding weeks in our entire season. Five teams are meeting at one spot this week to determine who represents the conference at the NAIA Opening Round.

One of the biggest phrases thrown around when it comes to competitive showdowns such as this is the all popular "Who wants it more?" You see, commentators and spectators use this phrase to somehow try to rev up the competitive juices in players and bring out the best. While it may be a valid question, I don't really think that that is how we will determine the results. How do you even define want? Is it just a response to a question? "How bad do you want it?" "Uhh I'd say I want it about a 7.5 on a 10-point Likert scale" the next guy says "Hmm give me a 1.4 out of 5, that's how much I want it" Unfortunately that is not how the winner and loser are decided. How do you measure it? Is it the number of sprints a team did after practice? Or which team sacrificed more? "Well, we sacrificed every weekend since New Year's to train." How does one person want something more than their competitor? I think it is safe to say each of these five teams WANT a championship as much as the next. The feeling of rushing the field to celebrate with your brothers, friends, and teammates is incredible. There is no greater feeling in sports than the championship celebration. Who doesn't WANT that? Want is what drives the preparation phase of this journey. You either want to prepare when the alarm goes off in the offseason or you do not want to when you hit the snooze button and roll back over for the rest of the off day.

I think the real question this week that will determine who wins and who loses is not "Who wants it more?" the real question is "Who will execute the best." Everyone WANTS to win, but not everyone EXECUTES when the chips are down and everything is on the line. The lifting, the hitting, the throwing, the running is all done, not to put together some sort of resume to show people that you WANT to win a title, all that is done to help prepare us as a team to execute when its time. The time is now and we are off to Taylor University for the week that has been on our minds since the first week of practices. It's been on Taylor's, Saint Francis', Spring Arbor's and Huntington's as well. We all WANT to win, but not everyone can. That is why this week is what sports are all about. Win or go home, emotions will be at their highest and lowest. It is going to be one heck of a week to be a Cougar Athlete.

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With you on the Journey,

JB

Matthew 11:28 

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