Wednesday warriors
What ball hockey taught me about teams and belonging
Every Wednesday evening, Canadian expats gather to play ball hockey in a gym in south London. It is a raucous return to our roots. But it’s something else, too.
Chasing a ball around together every week has transformed a gaggle of bankers, designers, techies, lawyers and teachers into a team, a family even. When I walk into that gym, stick in hand, I feel like I’m coming home.
You may have something similar in your own life. Perhaps you play frisbee football in a coed league or after-work softball with colleagues. Maybe you go sailing with the same crew every Saturday. Or you’re in a bowling, darts or quiz team that takes on all comers. Whatever the activity, you belong to a band of brothers (or sisters).
Other forms of socialising, such as going for a walk or hanging out in the pub, bond us with friends and colleagues, but playing together in a team does more. Striving towards a shared goal, taking on a common foe, acts as a crucible, peeling away our defences and forging the deepest kind of trust and camaraderie. My favourite hockey T-shirt bears the slogan “I Will Do Anything For My Teammates.” It sounds corny but there is a kernel of truth in there.
Building a team takes time. It is slow – because relationships cannot be accelerated. You can't make someone fall in love with you faster because you want to get married next month. You can't forge a close friendship today because you need a travel companion tomorrow. You can't make a child explain her anxiety in the three minutes before you leave for work
And you certainly can't download team spirit from a website. Teams are built on relationships. And relationships are built on two things that only slowing down can deliver: time and attention.
Teams form when people show up for each other, over and over again, with no strings attached. That fuels a slow, mysterious and rather beautiful form of alchemy. You don't know you're part of a team because an app tells you so. You know because you feel it.
At their best, teams do exactly what families are supposed to do: make us feel rooted, safe, understood and cherished. They also inspire us to raise our game, to find the best version of ourselves. No wonder schools are embracing team-based learning and a whole industry now fosters team building inside companies.
Study after study has shown that teams with a wider range of experience perform better. That's true everywhere from the boardroom to ball hockey.
Along with all the Canadians, my team, the London Jets, includes players from Britain and Eastern Europe. This is Global Intergenerational Week, so it's also worth remembering that one of the best ways to build a diverse team is to bring in a range of ages.
The Jets are thoroughly multigenerational. I'm the oldest player at 57. Our newest recruits are teenagers. The rest fall somewhere in between. That means that, in league games, we sometimes field a line where the left winger is studying for school exams, the centre has just become a dad for the first time and the right winger is an empty nester.
And it works. We have a lot fun together and win our fair share of games. Sometimes we even land a trophy…
People have always built family-like groupings beyond their clan but we now do so more than ever. Why? Because the social landscape has changed. Our mobile, peripatetic lifestyles pull us away from blood relatives, creating the need for new tribes. The trend for having children later, or not at all, adds to that yearning.
By serving as another family, teams can also free us from the stultifying effect of the real thing. Even healthy, happy families have a habit of stuffing everyone into permanent pigeonholes. Never mind how many years pass, or how much you evolve or accomplish along the way – go home for Christmas or Thanksgiving and suddenly you’re straight back into the same old role. You’re the Joker, the Peacemaker, the Successful One, the Pretty One, the Failure.
A team is a family where no one knows what you looked like in high school or cares how many vegetables you refused to eat as a toddler. It offers a fresh start, a blank canvas, a chance to experiment with other identities and ways of being and behaving – and what could be better than that?
Like family, a team is also there in your time of need. During the pandemic, when so much of life (including hockey) was canceled, we (ie. the Jets) started meeting up to play Spikeball in a local park. We spent many hours there together, bashing a ball against a net, arguing over the rules, shooting the breeze, just hanging out together. Those sessions, which often went on after the sun had set, helped keep me sane when it felt like the whole world was losing its mind.
No one on the Jets still dreams of making the big leagues, but we all turn up every Wednesday night like hungry draft prospects. Why? Because we love the game, of course. But also because our team is a family in the best sense of the word.
Absolutely lovely. Once again your message is expansive. You are addressing the wonderful way's people can find hours of commonality and flourishing together outside their working lives, and you have also reminded me to contemplate how we bring some of that fun and shared short-term goal mindset into our working lives.
Here's the short story: Next Wednesday will be my husband and my last day of work in our busy dental practice. Together - we are both dentists - we have nurtured a dental team there (12-17 professionals) for 37 years and almost everything in your piece, Carl, could apply.
Sure, we had to put on our "business hats" as a team from time to time, but really, the team we will miss now had a greater vision - keeping the humanity in healthcare. Hour-by-hour for decades that was our team rallying point, our shared goal. We were practicing healthcare in an old-school manner: gave every patient our home phone number, knew all about their families, even made house calls from time to time.
And a team took shape around that common value: connection.
Today, with yet another wonderful essay, you've reminded me that we will need to find some new teams in our life. And we will look for them in new ways, after reading your insights.
You've made me realize that we probably attracted a certain kind of employee... people who valued relationships, loved serving others, and had found what they were uniquely built to contribute. Our whole team - without any coaching - were the kind of people who understood that when we focused on the well-being of others, then the "business" details worked out just fine.
And much like your ball hockey afternoons, every day for our team was about the small personal wins of making each patient feel like the only person we saw that day... and the sheer joy we all had while doing it TOGETHER.
That's proably the ethos we will continue to enjoy in the next teams in our lives.
Thanks Carl, now that retirement is a week away, you have inspired me to put something new on my to-do list here in the next 6 months: join or create another team(s) of some sort!
- Dr. Lynda Ulrich
Thanks for a thought provoking read. I don't do any sport these days but I have sung in a choir for the last decade. I joined when I stopped working full time...as in working for money... we're still working at something I reckon. I didn't know anyone in the choir except the director and the pianist both of whom are daughters of a friend and I'd known them both since they were kids. I did have to steel myself to go. It felt a bit like going to a party where you don't know anyone, you can't have a drink because you're driving and as soon as you're in you're wondering how soon you can leave. But I did stick with the choir and have made new friends and acquaintances and been part of a team effort to sing better, rehearse for performances and achieve prizes at festivals. One of the huge positives for me is its intergenerational nature which ranges from women in the 20s upwards. A choir is a different slant from a sports team but when you're standing in your place on stage ready to sing you definitely feel the team's strength.