Reflections - Project Hunger Games

I wrote recently about expectations that Katniss had going into some matches of a recent tournament for her.  If you haven't read it yet, I'll wait here while you catch up.




You back?

Okay...

What I liked best about our discussion on this topic was I did not point out to Katniss that she might have lost those two matches due to her expectations. That's what she told me.

What I love about this is she is self reflecting after her matches.

This actually brings up a really good point that I don't know if I've reiterated enough yet (lol), but if you reflect after every single match why you won or lost (heck, maybe even write down why - I know blasphemy!) it will take you to the next level so much faster than if you never evaluate yourself.

Some people just go to a tournament, wish they would have won a match or two, or maybe lost and just don't even think about it again.

But I promise you if you do some self reflection after every match and you seriously be honest with yourself why you lost or won, that right there is a huge learning experience that you will put inside your toolbox that will help you and your future matches.

I PROMISE.

Let's compare it to something fun.

It's football season so let's compare it to that.

Last weekend the Dallas Cowboys hosted the Detroit Lions.  If you didn't see the game, then you didn't see one of the Defensive coach's pissed and throwing his arms in the air mad at his guys because they missed a block and gave up a touch down for the Lions.

But was also shown was he had his clipboard and tablet and he was showing them missed plays, plays they could do when they go back in, and positions on the field that would work better for them to succeed.

There is actually A LOT of times the coaches go over plays and instructions with the players during the game.  See this video clip and check out at times 1:20, 1:40, 2:30 and 2:50:




Further, we all can picture the entire team in the locker room days after the game going over scenarios from last weeks' game, and also the upcoming game.  They do this for EVERY SINGLE game.

This is a great example of why it's important for us little ole pool players to act like a professional football player - learning from every match we play!

Why did we win?  Why did we lose?  Why did my opponent end up coming back on me and I lost the lead and the match?  How did I overcome being down 0-5 and won 7-5?  Why did I get distracted?  What could I have done different?  How did I make that tough shot under pressure?

I could list 1,000 more questions for you, but I'll stop there :)

The point is, how do we ever learn and improve if we don't self reflect?

Ironically, I wrote a blog post about reflecting for the "Danielson Series," too.

Peeps - one of the best teachers is the experience - but not if we don't think about the whys of the wins and losses!

Let me state again that we all know we learn the MOST from our losses.  However, don't forget your wins!  Those are learning lessons as well.  And each lesson we put in our toolbox for the next tournament.

I eluded to writing them down and I'm not joking.  My paper notes transitioned to paper diary to this blog because I wanted to capture what happened.  What I didn't know was, I my learning was entrenched more because I wrote down what happened in all my matches.  Reflecting turned out to be an amazing part of my learning process, but writing them down propelled the learning process.

REFLECT!

Dart Championships on TV

I was intrigued over the weekend when I saw that there was this "thing" called the Dart World Championships playing on TV. 

Maybe it was the bad cold I was trying to get over blurring my thoughts to watch something I have no interest in, lol.  However, I really was genuinely interested in seeing the production and how it compared to pool.

Of course. 

I swear everything I read or see I can relate to pool somehow, lol.

And as I watched it, flipping back and forth from it to the Fifth Element (a fav movie of mine), let me just say I'm highly jealous for our sport.

Here, this photo kinda already proves why I was disappointed and jealous:

Can you see the depth of the crowd!  It was a HUGE venue and it was PACKED!  The amount of fans standing behind the two dart players was astounding.  Fans were cheering and yelling and it was quite the spectacle.  Even when pool was on TV we didn't have crowds as big as that.  The crowd was even larger than what I've seen at poker tournaments on TV.

It was a three-hour program and it had one of those famous announcers that extenuates the words, like for boxers.  And in this corner, the World Champion Briiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeennnnnnnn Casperrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

I have to admit I didn't see any payouts I didn't watch it all that long, but what I recognized was is darts is a highly followed sport that I probably had no idea about, but happened to see it on TV this day.

Even when I came to work this week, our secretary mentioned it to me and she was surprised how much the fans were into it and also had no idea there was a Championship or that it is something popular enough to be televised.

I bet people think the same thing about pool.  They see pool on TV and they think that we make great shots and that they wish they could play like us.  They are even surprised that there's a tournament that we're playing for money on TV.

This was held in London and doing research for this blog post, Wikipedia shows this is a mostly a sport with European players.  And there are qualifiers and brackets, etc etc.

I had heard that people play in dart tournaments, but hadn't thought past that to think they would have a World Championship like we do.  And didn't think it'd even be on TV.  Of course there's other sports like this that we don't think of but yet we see all the time in the pool room that are more popular than we realize:  Shuffleboard, darts and foosball are the ones that come to mind.

I'm sure the competitive dart players were very excited that this Championship was on TV, just like we get proud when pool is on TV.   I presume darts has the same struggles as we do trying to get  mainstream in a world that doesn't see pool as a mainstream sport yet.

I was pretty happy to see the darts on TV.  They are very similar in our wants of a low hanging fruit sport that should be more nationalized.  Hope for pool!