Jacques Plante is best known in sports lore for his pioneering the face mask for ice hockey goalies. Though this 7-time Vezina Trophy winner (awarded to the top NHL goalkeeper) may be immortalized more so for his commentary on “The failure of goalkeepers”:
Imagine yourself sitting in an office and you make an error of some kind—call it an error of judgment or a mistake over the phone. All of a sudden, behind you, a bright red light goes on…and there are 18,000 people shouting and jeering at you, calling you an imbecile and an idiot and a bum… The forward can skate off and ignore his mistakes but, as a goalie, you’ve got evidence to deal with.
I recently participated in a sports-panel and the first question asked by the moderator, NBC Broadcaster Ted Robinson, was how I dealt with such repeated public failures as a water polo goalie while playing at Stanford and then with the US National Team. The theme of the day had been set by Hall of Fame quarterback, Steve Young, who focused on such themes as accountability and trust, and I picked up from there.
There are really two things that allow for goalies to manage the psychological angst referenced in Plante’s quote. One, which I won’t go into much here, is the goalie’s entering a game knowing he’s given it his all in preparation and training. This, in large part, is where confidence stems from: recognizing you’ve trained harder than the shooter you’re facing, that your legs are stronger than any other goalie’s, reactions honed, technique polished. It’s a personal, private training ethic which develops into what I call, “Earned confidence.”
But there’s a much richer component involved, available in nearly all team sports. It’s one of life’s greatest virtues which sport provides an ideal foundation for achieving. On the panel, at the time, I referred to it as having a sense of trust, love, and community amongst one’s teammates.
The goalie trusts in his defender to assume his responsibility for part of the cage, leaving the remainder for the goalkeeper (who, consequently, blocked this shot). Photo by Brenda Avery.
A great deal of nuance comprises a well-functioning, successful team defense. Very often, this goes unnoticed by casual observers as there’s a subtlety to it. Because water polo is played in the water, it’s relatively slow-moving. From the standpoint of the goalie, as Defensive General, this is a plus. With water-based defenders all in close proximity, it’s quite easy to direct the defenders from the goal.
With an attacking player in shooting position, defenders put arms up in an attempt to reduce the size of the goal available for a shot. For a well-coached team that clicks well together, the players all come to know exactly how and where to “funnel” the ball. In doing so, this leaves the goalie with less responsibility and a responsibility he’s expected to take on. Preventing a ball from entering a 30-square foot rectangle floating in the water is pretty hard, but having that goal shrunk down to something less so becomes quite feasible—expected, even.
This is where trust and accountability come into play. Getting to the point where everyone is on the same page involves a lot of failed attempts. And those failures require ownership. I coach my own goalies to make sure they take responsibility for goals scored first before seeking out others on the team. In training, when the team properly funnels the ball and it scores, the goalie needs to relay to the team that it was his responsibility. Not only does this inform defenders they played the situation correctly and should do so again in future situations, but it removes the goalie from the “blame game,” reminding the team that the unit as a whole defends the goal together.
Young recalled early in his career, following an interception, he would come to the sideline and explain to the team all the factors that led to it: the ball was wet, sun in my eyes, pass rushers, etc. But at some point, he changed his tact: he took ownership, telling them explicitly, “It’s my fault. I messed it up.” From that point, he noticed his teammates also taking ownership of their errors and coming together as a unit. He goes further to say that accepting this sort of accountability led to him to becoming an overall more ethical person.
Once this sort of trust has been established, it becomes a really fun place to be a goalie. You know where shots are coming from, when they’re coming, where they’re going (or, as importantly, where they can’t go). In addition, it allows goalies to do much more than they otherwise would.
As one might recall from high school geometry, the more a goalie can come off the goal line towards the shooter, the more angle he cuts off and, consequently, the less goal available to the shooter. In water polo, two factors limit this. One is a lob shot. Unlike hockey, it’s relatively easy for a shooter to lob the ball over the goalie versus shooting it past him. But there’s a second, more relevant issue. With the attackers close to the goal, if an attacker with the ball is able to pass to an open teammate at a severe angle (playing the position of wing) then this results in a relatively easy shot on goal behind the goalie who had come out to take off the angle.
The only way to give the goalie the confidence to come out and take off the angle is for the goalie to know his teammates take seriously their responsibility of guarding the wing.
Here it’s worth reminding the reader of something, which will allow us to touch on the aforementioned love-component of the successful team: playing water polo as a non-goalie is absolutely exhausting. I do it now as a coach of 16-year old boys and after just ten minutes I reach levels of exhaustion I’ve never experienced elsewhere. So when the goalie demands his teammates guard the wing and guard it closely, he’s relying on them to have swum the maximum distance in the course of play, to have their hips up in proper position while wrestling and watching the ball and dealing with the nuisance of the non-stop movement from an attacker. On top of this, guarding the wing takes the defender off the top line of attack once the ball turns over, thus placing himself in the lowest probability for scoring a goal once the team regains possession.
Once you start to see the pieces fall into place, you understand why successful goalies always shift the praise to their teammates. Playing on a team that does the excruciatingly difficult things well, for the sake of the team, is pure joy. My junior year at Stanford, our team lost only one game all season en route to winning our second consecutive national championship. And before every one of those games, I couldn’t wait to play, in large part because I trusted my defenders, and knew they trusted me.
I made mistakes. But as I’d retrieve the ball from the back of the cage, with fans cheering and jeering and the game on the line, I would catch the eye of a teammate. And with a subtle nod of his head, he reflected the trust, love, and community we had established. Likewise, when that same player inevitably erred, resulting in a goal, he would look back, again to catch my eyes and let me know the mistake was his. We were in this together. With that sense of love built into a team, a bunch of strangers jeering and judging you becomes meaningless background noise.
This is not an easy place to arrive as a group of high school or college aged men or, in the case of Steve Young, for his offensive line protecting him game after game. This is why many teams don’t achieve excellence. Just as with all relationships and worthwhile endeavors, attaining this requires taking a risk: admitting a failure, extending a hug, and trusting in someone else to look after you even if they don’t get recognition for it.
