“Everything seems simple, the game is easy”

I have often been asked about an athlete being “in the zone.” What does it feel like? What does that mean?

When I was a kid I asked my dad this, and the first thing he said was “It’s hard to explain, but when you’re there, you’ll know it. You can feel it.”

As usual, he was right (and I can see him slyly smiling while reading that).

It’s impossible to fully describe what that feeling is, but the athletes know it. One of the better quotes I’ve heard about it came, I was told, from Gary Player. I have no idea if it’s true as I can’t find any documentation about it, but if it isn’t then whoever made it up influenced me in a positive way.

I was told was he was going into Sunday leading by a fairly wide margin—six strokes or so. When asked by a reporter what it would take to win, he said something to the effect of “If I’m not thinking well, I probably won’t win. If I’m thinking well, I should win. If I’m not thinking, no one will touch me.”

Everything seems so simple when you’re “in the zone.” The button looks like the eight-foot. You don’t question or doubt anything. The game is easy.

I’ve watched some of my own games when I know I was feeling that way, and the shots I called for myself often seem terrifying. Most of the time you hear the commentators in the booth saying things like “this is pretty scary, but you can tell she’s feeling it.” 

And I was. You really can tell, even from the outside.

Watching Jennifer Jones at the 2014 Olympics is a good example. No one was going to beat her: she was on a mission. 

The entire run of Team Jacobs in the 2013 Trials onto the Olympics is similar.

Brad Gushue during his first Brier win in his hometown in 2017 stands out. Rachel Homan at the Scotties this year looked that way as well.

So what happens when you don’t have it?

That’s the tricky part.

It’s human nature to want to fix it. That only intensifies when you devote your life to perfecting your craft. In our attempts to right the ship, we often end up “trying too hard” which is an oversimplification of what’s happening—but it’s the best wording I’ve heard to describe that feeling.

To me, it feels as if you’re slowly slipping down into quicksand, so you’re panicking a bit and trying not to fall further … but the more you struggle, the faster you sink.

For whatever reason, this week at the Brier, we are seeing some uncharacteristic struggles from some of the best teams and players in the game. While we’re all curious as to why, the more pertinent question is, how have they been handling it?

When you’re not making shots, you start to question everything. Some players start to snipe at their teammates, some question the ice or the rocks, and many begin to question the strategy.

Human nature, again, means seeking a solution—if you’re the one struggling or to offer everything you can to help if it’s one of your teammates. When skips struggle as shotmakers, it becomes easy to question everything else too. The ice reading can become more challenging; even the strategy can seem less obvious than it normally would.

Often, when you see a skip who’s struggling with confidence, their whole game slows down and not in a good way. I know this has historically been true for me, and it’s always a conversation my teams have had around keeping the game pace up, purposely, because it gives everyone less time to doubt and question.

Conversations and communication are important but at some point, it becomes kind of a “fake it ’til you make it” situation where calling something quickly—even if it’s not the right shot—to get immediate everyone buy-in is more beneficial than focusing on debating options. That can lead to questions about paths and ice and everything else.

Don’t get me wrong here, communication and those conversations are what makes the great teams great. They are absolutely essential. But as I remember discussions with several past teams where we weren’t sure of a path’s speed and at some point, discussing it further wasn’t generating any knew information or knowledge … and we had to accept that it’s just a guess.

Once you do that, you may as well make your best guess, commit to it, throw it … and then see if you were right.

Top teams have all had the conversation around what each player needs—in general, in the hack, after the end, after a miss, and so on. But sometimes an overzealousness to help a teammate can be counterproductive. This is a very tricky balance, and that’s where you occasionally see long-term teammates, great coaches, and mental trainers come into play.

When we won our first Scotties in 2016, I talked to my mental trainer every day. Every day. I also had my dad there, who was my OG (if unofficial) mental trainer, and I talked to him throughout the whole thing. I was lucky to have the resources I had, but I also knew I needed to use them, and not just that week.

Being resilient and “mentally tough” is like any other skill … it comes easier to some people than others, but it’s trainable for all people. You have to train your brain the same as you train your left hamstring (if you’re anything like me) … it needs to be exercised and slowly built up over time.

So what do we take from this? I pay extra attention to the teammates around a player who is struggling. I also pay a lot of attention to a team’s “outside” people: bench strength can become a big factor here. I wish I could have their mics live all the time so I could hear the interactions, because that’s where the magic can occur, if done right.

I’ve always been told (you can probably guess by who) that the team who stays the most even-keel in a long week, fights the rollercoaster of emotion the best and stays more level is likely the team that will win. In both Scotties wins, and many other events like that, there were times where the goal was challenged, emotions ran high, and we had to regroup and deal with it. I truly believe the way we dealt with it in the winning years was the difference.

I’ve never played in a Brier (no matter how badly I wanted to) but this much I believe: all else equal skill-wise, it will be the team who manages the emotional rollercoaster, the missed shots, the bad breaks, the unexpected hardships and the ups and downs the best who will come out on top in Regina.

I, for one, am on the edge of my seat watching one of the wildest Briers I can remember, waiting with baited breath to see who that is.