Letter to My Teammates

I have two stories I want to share with you in an effort to try to explain—with some degree of clarity—what it meant, and what it means, to have played on that 1994 National Championship Team.

The first story is of a different lowly college freshman. A basketball player, starting for his team in the NCAA finals against a heavily-favored Georgetown squad. He’s the only freshman on the court. His team is down 62 to 61 with under 20 seconds to play. On a recent possession he had taken to the hoop the Hoya’s 7-ft center Patrick Ewing and notched two points for the effort. But then his teammate bricked two free throws and the Hoyas sunk one basket and here they are down by one. 19 seconds. 18. 17. 16. And the ball kicks out to the freshman. He steps back, jumps, shoots. Swish. And with the basket–and some smart clock management–earns his team the NCAA title and himself a place in history.

The player, of course, was Michael Jordan. And as we all know, Jordan would go on to have the most storied basketball career in history. But he has always pointed back to that NCAA basket as the turning point in his career. Not because the ball went in. But because he had the courage to take the shot in the first place. The real tragedy, he has surmised, would not have been if he had missed the shot, but rather if he hadn’t taken the shot at all. By taking the shot, Jordan has said, he laid down the foundation for a career of last-second game-winning heroics. Once you’ve taken the shot, you will always take the shot. It doesn’t matter if it’s on the floor of the 1982 NCAA men’s basketball final, or on the field of the 1994 NCAA women’s lacrosse final. If you want to win the game you’ve got to take the shot.

The second story is about a football player. Mark Ingram. On the night he’s awarded the Heisman Trophy in the closest Heisman vote in history. When his name is announced as the 2009 Heisman Trophy winner, Ingram stands up from his seat in the front row of the Downtown Athletic Club, hugs each of his fellow Heisman finalists, hugs his Mom, and hugs his coach (in that order, by the way) and starts up the steps to the stage where the pantheon of former Heisman winners are waiting to welcome him into their club. If you’ve ever watched the award show, you know the level of pageantry on display. All the former winners arrayed in tableau, hands extended for a shake, a clap on the back. And as the crowd noise subsides and Ingram draws a few deep breaths at the podium, an audible chorus rises from the row of former winners behind him. “Take your time,” they’re saying. “Take your time.” First one. Then another. A third. “Take your time.” It sounds like a chant. And while it’s easy to guess what they mean—collect yourself, take a minute, don’t lose it here, Mark—I think there’s another, subtler, but more truthful message to be heard: Take your time, Mark. Take your time. It will be years before the full meaning of what you’ve just accomplished becomes clear. Take your time. 

Take the shot.
And take your time.

Interestingly, both of these mandates are ones I clearly remember Chris calling in from the sideline, except usually in reverse: “Take your time…take your time.” And then “Take the shot!”

We took our shot. The 1994 team. And it went in. And we’ve taken our time, too, these last 20 years to absorb what that winning shot has meant.

For me, it was the unassailable proof positive of the power of hard work. You hear it all the time: “good things don’t come easy” and “put in the work, it’ll pay off,” and other catchphrases of the like. But to experience it in the context of a National Championship winning effort—your University’s first NCAA women’s lacrosse title—takes the learning to Pavlovian levels.

We worked so hard that year. Harder than we had ever worked, I think. We had lost in the finals the year before and we were back in the Pit for Captains’ practices in January ready for another go at it. In Jadwin for pre-season in February. Outdoors in March. Down on Butler Field with Mr. Simons and his baseball glove and a bag of balls on our days off, getting drilled on our shotmaking. Catch. Fake. Shoot. Catch. Fake. Shoot. If we were going to get another shot to take a shot, we wanted it to be the best one we were capable of taking. We worked hard. We worked smart. We worked together. And it paid off in the best possible way we could imagine. We earned exactly what we wanted and exactly what we’d set out to earn: an NCAA Championship.

C’mon: what a powerful message with which to arm two dozen young women. And what a powerful message for us to carry into the world. That hard work is a currency we use to earn what we want most. And that it’s also a valuable and valued end unto itself. I think often about the ramifications of that victory not just for those of us on the team, but for the future teams we’d coach, for the future teams Chris would coach, for the students we’d teach, and the children we’d raise. To be able to deliver with such clarity of mind and experience the lesson that hard work equals success—not sometimes, but every time—is transformative.

I have to believe the echo of that win can be heard on all the fields and in all the locker rooms in which we’ve stood since; it can be heard in the hallways of the places we work; and it can be heard in the homes where we live now. I’d like to think some part of the DNA of that victory found its way into my daughter Thea’s genetic disposition when she asks, looking up at the TV on a Sunday afternoon in autumn: “Where are the girls on that football field?” And then: “I’d like to play football on TV.” She assumes that anything—and everything—is possible if you’re willing to work for it. Or into my son Torin’s chromosomal make-up when he brings home a painting from his Montessori school and I say, “Oh, Little Man, it’s gorgeous. I love it.” And he replies: “Thanks, Mama. I worked so hard to make it.” He believes when you work hard you make beautiful things. And he’s right.

So to Princeton, and to the Athletic Department, and to our parents, especially my Dad, who is here, and my Mom (may she rest in peace): Thank you for giving us the time to take our shot.

To Chris: Thank you for taking the time to teach us—patiently and wisely—what it means to take your best shot.

To today’s team and to future teams: May you always have the courage to take the shots presented to you. And the time to enjoy them. 

And to the 1994 team: May we long remember the lessons we earned 20 years ago, when we took our shot. And may time grant us all a multitude more shots to share what we learned. 

Thank you.

Written and delivered by Amory Rowe Salem (P’95) on April 6, 2014