2012 Legacy Lacrosse Cup Key Note Speaker Dr. Gregory Dale, Part 7

All right, last thing here real quickly is this idea of character. But you know, sometimes you're going to feel like this guy right? Look at this guy. Bad things happen sometimes, right? How about this? How'd you like to be that guy? Yeah, right. Or how about that guy? That's going to hurt. Right now I want you to... Who's this guy? Hold on. Not Yao Ming. I want you to look at that kid next to him. This is at the last Olympics. That kid next to him is nine years old. He's nine years old now. That guy next to him is like eight feet tall. You got to remember that. I don't know if you guys remember, but when they had the Olympics in China in 2008, they had several major earthquakes before the Olympics, and many of their schools over there were poorly built. Literally, when the earthquakes happened, the walls went like this, the ceilings collapsed, and thousands of kids perished instantly. This kid right here, I don't know if you can see the side of his head here, this kid was one of those kids. In the third grade, in his classroom, got 30 kids in his class. 27 of them died instantly, just like that. I want you to think about that. 27 of your classmates gone. Classmates gone just like that. There were him and two other kids still trapped in the rubble. This kid found a way and got out after like an hour and a half. He gets out, and his teammates, his classmates, are in there crying, they're hurt, and he keeps telling them, 'Wait for help, wait for help, help's coming.' Help doesn't come, and this kid decides, 'I got to go back in there and get that guy.' He goes back in and gets the first guy, un- gets this guy, takes all the rubble off of him, and pulls him out to safety. This guy's beaten up really bad. He goes back in and gets the second guy. It's amazing. Pulls that guy out. And the people when they finally came said, 'What in the world were you doing? You would have totally killed yourself.' And I love what this kid said when they asked him, 'What were you thinking when you did that?' He said, 'I was the hall monitor that day. It was my job to take care of my classmates.' Right? I'm the hall monitor. Right? How about that? Right now I want you to think about this. That says a lot about that kid's character. I want to wrap it up here tonight with a couple of things. I want you to think about this. And as I think about Parker and the life that this kid led, is it short of life that this guy had? I didn't know Parker. Like most of you in this room, didn't know him. But that kid clearly, clearly was a person of character. He did things a lot of things the right way. Here's what I'm going to ask you about: how do you handle adversity? Do officials ever make bad calls? What do you think? Right, sure they do. You know, we have a rule at Duke on our men's lacrosse team. We have a rule: no palms up. You never get to do this as a young man on our men's lacrosse team. You know why? Because when you do this, you're whining to somebody. You're either whining to your coach, you're whining to your teammate, or you're whining to an official. That's a non-negotiable. You don't do that on our men's lacrosse team. How you handle adversity, how you handle it when athletes or when officials make bad calls, says a lot about your character. When things aren't going well for you, says a lot about your character. And what I want to get you to focus on is these things right here. This is really important. If you get nothing else of what I talked about tonight, please pay attention to this right here, and we're going to wrap it up right here. Being a great teammate. As I think you heard Mr. Jackson say a minute ago, there's only really three people that are going to remember your stats at the end of the season: that's you and your mom and dad. That's it. Nobody else is really going to remember your individual stats. Maybe your coaches a little bit. But your teammates are going to remember you for what kind of person you were to be around every day. That's what you're going to be remembered for. I promise you, you will not be remembered for what kind of stats you had. And as I say right here, on your team, there are two athletes or two people that athletes talk bad about the most when they're not getting the playing time they want. Any idea who those people are? Two people: the coach and the kid who's playing in front of them. I hear it all the time: 'That coach is an idiot' and 'That kid stinks.' I hear it all the time. There's some of you in this room right now that don't get the playing time that you think you deserve. You think you ought to be playing over this kid. How about this? When you're on the sideline, what is your role? When you're on the sideline, I would say it's to encourage your teammates. What if everybody's into the game but you're off over here by yourself, and you're over here having a pity party for yourself, and you won't congratulate your teammates when they come off the field, or you're kind of in your own head a little bit? You're telling everybody in that whole stadium, 'I am more important than this team.' Or how about this? You play all the time, you play all the time, and you didn't play well in this game, but your team won, and you won't go and join that celebration with everybody else because you're upset with yourself because you didn't play a great game. I would say shame on you. You're telling everybody, 'I'm more important than this team.' You know, our men's basketball team, they film the bench during games. There's a camera on the bench. There's a young man who's a freshman for us right now, his name is Quinn Cook. We went to a preseason tournament down in Hawaii. Quinn played a little bit, didn't play a lot. He comes back, they come back, the coaches call him into their office when they get back to Durham, and he thinks they're going to talk to him about what he needs to do to work on to play more. And you know what they did? They showed him shot after shot after shot of him sitting on the bench and what his attitude was like on the bench. He had his head down, had a towel over his head a couple of times, wasn't high-fiving his teammates when they came off the floor. And the coaches said to him, 'Son, if you continue to do that, not only will you be on this bench for the rest of your career here, but you might not get the privilege to be a part of what we're doing anymore.' It's not about you. It's about us. We have a young man who played basketball for us, Greg Paulus. Some of you might remember that name. He was a captain as a sophomore in college. He's a captain, starting point guard as a junior, starting point guard as a senior. Halfway through the year, he loses his spot to a kid named Nolan Smith, who was a sophomore at the time. We win the ACC tournament championship that year. Greg Paulus on the bench was the first guy off the bench, and he goes over and hugs Nolan Smith. He hugs him. And later I asked Nolan, 'What did he say to you?' And he said, 'You know what? You're a major reason why we won this thing tonight. I'm proud of you. Great job.' Is it about Greg Paulus, or is it about Duke basketball? Is it about you, or is it about your team? Which one are you? And I would tell you, at the end of the year, your kids, your teammates and coaches, are going to look back at you, and they're either going to say, 'This kid was a sail, helping us go where we wanted to go,' or 'She was an anchor, dragging us down. She always gossiped about her teammates behind her back. He always griped about coaches. He always had a bad attitude. We're always trying to pick this kid up all the time. This kid complained about playing time all the time.' I want you to understand that you have no control over your playing time. You do not. You have zero control. Can you go to your coach and say, 'Coach, I haven't played all year, but man, I'm feeling it tonight, so go ahead and put me in, coach'? You get to do that? I don't think so. Your coaches have control over your playing time. But you can influence it. What can you? Put this back up here for a second. You have influence. I would tell you the two things you have control over are your attitude and your effort. Michael Jordan, the most talented guy on the planet, worked harder than everybody else. And by the way, if you're one of the more talented kids on your team and you don't work harder than everybody else, I'd say shame on you. Coaches dislike very much coaching kids like you. You can get away with it some of you because you're more physically gifted, so you loaf here and you loaf there. Is that the legacy you want to have? I don't think so. And you know what? You can be the most talented, or you can be the least talented. There's another kid named Josh Pastner who played for the Arizona Wildcats men's basketball team. They won a national championship. Josh is a freshman walk-on. He only gets in when they're up by 30, 30 seconds left in the game. The student section's chanting, 'Josh, Josh, Josh.' The kid gets in and averages less than a minute a game, averages less than a point a game. But at the end of that national championship season, the kid at the very end of the bench was voted the most valuable player on that team. The kid who never played, most valuable player on a national championship team. Because you know why? His attitude and his effort. Those are two things. You want to play more? Work on those two things. I promise you, you're going to have a better chance to get that playing time that you want. And the last thing I want to say here is: what will be your legacy? Parker had a legacy. And here's the thing: it's not a matter whether you will have a legacy when you leave your program right now. It's not a matter of whether you will or not. It's a matter of what kind of legacy you're going to leave. I want you to go home tonight or in the next week or so and write down three or four things you would like for your teammates and your opponents—I'm sorry, your teammates and your coaches—to say about you at the end of the season. If they were to stand up at the banquet and say, 'Wow, here's this kid,' what would they say? None of you would say, 'Wow, he had a crappy attitude. She really complained all the time. She didn't work hard. She didn't have a good work ethic.' All of you would say the right things. Well, here's the thing: you need to live your legacy today like you want it to be at the end of the year. You're going to have a legacy. What kind of legacy do you want to have? And it should be about what kind of teammate that you are. All right, that's really, really important. So here's the last thing I want you to understand: you need to view your lacrosse as a place to get away from everything else that you have going on in your life. Some of you look at it like it's a job. It's your place to get away from all the cares that you have in the world. I want you to focus on why you participate. You started doing this because it was fun, I bet you anything. And I would tell you, you need to focus on what you control: your attitude and effort. And remember that you need to enjoy all those wins. Coaches hate to hear me say this, but you need to enjoy every win, even if it's an ugly one. Enjoy it for a while, and then spend some time thinking about what you need to do next. Here's a quote I want to leave you with: 'Beginning of a new day, you've been given this day to use as you will. You can waste it, or you can use it for good. What you do today is important because you're exchanging a day in your life for it. When tomorrow comes, this day will be gone forever, and in its place, there is something that you've left behind. Let it be something good. Let it be something good. Let those teammates know that this place was a better place because you were here.' If you ever come to Durham, North Carolina, you need to look me up. Duke's a great place. Love to show you around. [email protected]. That's my email. You ever want to email me about any of this stuff, the mental part of the game is important. It's important. Where does confidence come from? Yourself. How about pressure? Yourself. Remember, you will have a legacy. It's a matter of what kind of legacy you're going to leave. Thank you very much for your time, guys. I appreciate it.