Take the Charge; Don’t Flinch

Delaney Couri

Anyone who knows me could tell you that I am (and always will be) a sports fan. I have written before about my love for football and the way that started, used photos from basketball games to write about lifelong learning, and generally have shared about the ways sports allow me to destress in a way that other things in my life simply do not. Lately, my sport of choice has been basketball. I am excited for the upcoming baseball and softball season, but men’s and women’s basketball have both kept me company from the cold nights of early December through the spring breezes of late February.

There are a lot of rules in basketball and one of my favorites is the charge.

To take a charge in basketball means that you are a defensive player who, instead of committing a foul on the offensive player trying to score, stands your ground so firmly and securely that you are the one who is being fouled. In other words, an offensive player runs into a defensive player and it is considered a foul against the offense. I love this foul because it almost never happens. Players are always moving, always driving and thus nearly every foul called in basketball is on the defender rather than the offensive player driving the ball.

I watched a lot of basketball last week and one day while walking home thought to myself, “I need to start taking charges.” Why would I think this? Well, frankly put, because I am little dramatic and thus like to narrativize my life in ways I see fit. So, when I say that I need to start taking more charges, I don’t mean that I am going to start playing basketball competitively. Rather, I mean that I need to start taking proverbial charges by standing up for myself in what I believe. Being firm and grounded, unafraid to fall to the ground every once and a while if that is what it takes to win.

I told one of my advisors about my new life strategy the other day and her response was, “Don’t flinch. Because you know, if you flinch, the foul is on you.” She’s right. If I falter, if I flinch, if I get jumpy or anxious or give in, the foul is on me. But if I maintain my stance, being still rather than running, I may get hit, but in the end, I’ll be the one shooting the free throws and getting what I want.
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That is the original blog I was going to write. About taking a stance, which is good, but also about constantly being on defense, which is not. While I do think sometimes I need to learn to stand and take a charge, I also think I need to learn to play offense. And to play games for fun, not to win.

I may get knocked down sometimes, but I don’t want to live my life expecting that to happen.

At the beginning of this week, I was ready to take a charge. I made a few tough decisions, didn’t blink, and waited for the offense to come. To my surprise, what came instead was gentleness and care. Instead of standing firm as a guard, I stood firm like a tree planted in the ground. No one tried to knock me over, but instead they slowed down, handed me the ball and said, “What if we played together?”

Life is hard, but it doesn’t have to be a competitive sport. And the people I surround myself with actually aren’t my opponents, they’re my friends. And it turns out, we’ve been playing on the same team all along.