If you ask Shawnee Harle what her message is when she speaks to crowds the assistant coach with our national women’s basketball team is clear as the Alberta blue sky on a cold winter day.
“The gist of it is that mistakes are necessary. I think that’s very much the opposite of what sports teaches us,” she said in advance of her talk scheduled for January 25th at Red Deer College. “As long as we’re afraid of mistakes we’ll always protect ourselves from them.”
In her many years of experience in the world of sport Harle says safe is just that-you always get safe results, you never get to explore your greatness as long as you’re safe and if you’re willing to make mistakes that’s how you get unsafe, she said.
“Learning and growing requires mistakes. It is actually a requirement. When athletes and students and kids can shift that perspective that mistakes are necessary and its part of the process, that I no longer have to be afraid of them and if I’m not afraid of them then I don’t have to protect against them,” she said.
She uses the analogy of a tiger living in the wild and one who resides in a zoo. The zoo tiger has people who provide food, shelter and protection giving it a safe and predictable life. A jungle tiger needs to survive on its own which leads to a more risky, unpredictable existence.
“If life is the jungle. If sport is the jungle and we spend our entire time training our kids, our athletes, our students like they live in the zoo how will they ever be ready for the jungle?”
Harle has plenty of experience coaching at a high level but even for teams and athletes at lower levels of their sport the theme remains the same for those who come out on top.
“The teams that win the most and the athletes that perform the best are the athletes that aren’t afraid to lose. They play to win rather than not to lose.”
Now she’s not saying one should play their sport with reckless abandon but instead make the choice to take a risk without knowing if that risk is going to pay off or not.
She says she has seen kids in the gym making some great moves on the basketball court and when asked if they’ve used that move in a game the answer is similar. The athlete says they are saving for when they get better at it and she asks a simple question.
“Why would you save it until you get really good at it? Why not try the new move now?”
Harle says if they understand it’s not supposed to work the first time out and they’re not afraid of that they are more likely to go try it.
“ But if they go on the premise of I’m never going to use my new move until I’m sure it’s going to work, you can see how it can handcuff us from taking risks ,” she said.
Harle will be addressing coaches, athletes, teachers and parents on Monday night from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. in the Margaret Parsons Theatre at Red Deer College on January 25th. Admission is $25.00.
