In key athletic moments, let your emotions flow

Three game points.

In the fifth game, no less.

And at the end of the women’s volleyball game against USC
on Friday night, even with the urge to contribute to the heckling
and banter that comes with the crosstown rivalry, an even greater
urge came over me.

I wanted to cry.

But I didn’t.

Maybe because I had to be macho and repress any sort of emotion
I had at that moment.

Or it’s possible my years at UCLA and my exposure to its
athletics program have jaded me, keeping me from showing any sort
of disappointment after what should be considered heartbreaking
losses.

But I think, more than anything, there’s something taboo
about associating crying with sports.

A “there’s no crying in baseball” mentality
makes us think of an athlete as less of an athlete (or a spectator
as less of a spectator, in my case) for getting involved in a game
emotionally beyond superficial excitement or regret.

There’s something wrong with that.

There’s something wrong with saying it’s OK for
players to put all of their mind and strength into a game, yet
ignore the heart when that’s all they have left.

It’s a powerful thing to witness an athlete devote a huge
chunk of life to a particular sport and experience a defining
moment.

These lacrimation-worthy events aren’t an everyday
occurrence. They seldom come in games like last men’s
basketball’s rout of Monterrey Tech on Thursday. And rarely
in matchups such as Saturday’s UCLA-Oregon football game,
even though a bowl berth was on the line.

But it seems fitting that the times ripe for a tear or two often
come in the moments of victory in the crosstown rivalry.

The wailing and gnashing of teeth, on the other hand, are saved
for those bitter, last-second defeats when, up until the end, it
seemed like the Bruins would have bragging rights for a while.

Though my teeth are intact and hardly a wail slipped past my
lips, I found myself in a daze Friday night just moments after the
women’s volleyball team fell to the Women of Troy in a match
where biting your nails, holding your breath and saying a prayer or
two were all standard behavior for fans.

Everyone in the group I was with sort of stood in Pauley
Pavilion in disbelief at the end, hoping all of us would somehow
wake up from a bad dream to see that UCLA had in fact won.

No such luck.

But after our few minutes of mourning, we moved on with our
lives.

There’s a parallel to sports in there somewhere ““ I
guess in the idea that, win or lose, teams need to forget the past
and press on toward whatever it takes to bring home a W in the next
game.

Women’s volleyball just lost for the ninth time in a row
to USC. It doesn’t matter. What’s the team going to do
to beat the Trojans the next time the two teams meet up?

The football team qualified for postseason play last
Saturday.

Doesn’t matter.

The USC game looms eerily around the corner, and if the Bruins
want to have any chance of beating the No. 1 team in the country,
they had better move on and focus on doing whatever it takes to be
the victor come Dec. 4.

Reflecting on the emotional past isn’t going to impact the
game, but it doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter.

Corny as it may sound, we can learn from our emotions, fickle as
they are. When were happy or sad, at the hands of Bruin sports or
anything else in life, we get over it.

And I hate to say it, but win or lose in any case against USC,
we’ll get over it.

I just happen to like getting over winning more than getting
over losing.

Either way, I’m sure some of us will end up shedding tears
Dec. 4.

Looper is going to cry unless you e-mail him at
[email protected].