Winning Beginning

Sorry to be dwelling so much on stats, numbers and other pool-related data lately. But we just passed the halfway mark of our league season last night and I'm happy to report that our record stands at 6-2 (there are usually 15 matches per season). I did some digging and went back to summer of 2006, when I first started taking team stats. For the first half of that season we had a dismal 1-7 record. Going forward from there we went 2-6 in the fall of 2006 and then we teetered back and forth between 3-5 and 4-4 for the next several seasons until now, when we've finally mustered the momentum to be well within reach of a 10-5, 11-4, 12-3 or (if we really, really focus) an unfathomable 13-2 season. I'm not going to get ahead of myself, as I'm sure we're in for some tough weeks (just two weeks ago we suffered a humiliating 0-5 breakdown). But I can sense something is different with this team. Not only do we have a full 8 players for the first time in I can't remember how long, but even our newest player has been in the league for over a year. In other words, we're a more mature team. I've brought in two veterans of the league (from outside of Sophie's), one is a SL5 and the other is a SL7. I've brought back a former teammate who took some time off recently. I've come to the conclusion that the success of a team is not based merely on the skill rankings of its players. Indeed, it requires week after week, season after season of watching one another play pool. And taking away something beneficial from a loss as much as gaining confidence from a win. I can tell a few of our players are shedding their need to "be a hero" by going for gutsy runouts and are instead taking simple, effective defensive/safety shots. Players are calling for their own timeouts more often, as opposed to the timeouts being initiated from the bench. That is so refreshing. Normally I am reluctant to talk about winning for fear of being too optimistic or that I'll jinx things. But it's become pretty evident that we're a team entirely capable of riding this wave for a while and fending off the usual self-destruction/burnout that comes with the second half of a season (especially during the spring when it gets nice outside). Knock on wood.