Red Stars Broken By Breakers: Two Games Forward, One Game Back

Cambridge, MA July 15, 2009.  The worst thing about Wednesday games is you don't have long to relish your weekend victory before  confronting a new reality.

The edits were barely in on our last article assessing Chicago's prospects for the WPS post-season, as the club was riding a two game win streak and an explosion of Cristiane's offensive production, when Chicago took a dizzying blow to their momentum giving the lagging Boston Breakers a new lease on life in a 1-0 outcome.

A graph of Chicago's momentum resembles the lines on an ecg tape: sharp peaks, deep valleys. Except in this case, the spikes don't represent a healthy heartbeat—they represent a series of tumbles off the mountain the team has just climbed.

Assuming anything short of a complete melt-down by at least two of their closest competitors for the final playoff berth, The Red Stars may be no more than one defeat or two draws away from planning for next year.  

Having lost a head-to-head contest with the team they were most likely to displace on the postseason table, it's time for Chicago to get some religion or start the requiem.

The fortunes of Chicago and Boston have been similar in many respects except that the Breakers have seemed to be a beat ahead or behind the Red Stars in reversals of fortune.

Early in the season, the Breakers were winning when Chicago was tying. Then, Chicago broke Boston down with a 4-0 win and it appeared the Red Stars were in rapid ascent and Boston had peaked too early. Next thing you know, Chicago is on a three game losing streak and Boston is getting their mojo back. Then, Chicago starts winning games and scoring goals, while Boston slumps. And now, the next turn, with Boston surviving a defensive contest at home, moving up again, with the Red Stars down for the count.  

At this point, Chicago is beyond excuses by players or the coaching staff—but that could be a good thing.

There's something about being in dire straits in sports, in business, or life in general (and sports is business and is a metaphor for life and business, which is what makes it such a powerful force in our society).  You see it all the time in people on the verge of losing everything.

Once you get close enough to the edge you finally realize how simple life is. You pull away all the fluff, blow away all the haze, and there it is in front of you. The simplest of choices: To live or to die. Win or lose. Get up or stay down. To blame someone else, or take responsibility yourself. To use what little time and opportunity you still have for one last shot, or lament all the muffed chances, doomed to rot in the hell of "what if," "if only," and, "it wasn't my fault."

In this situation everyone is on the line together, and at the same time, everyone's head is on the block individually. If we win, we do it as a team. If we lose, we each have to answer for the role we played in failure.

As hard as it is for players, front office, owners, and fans to endure, sometimes this precarious position is the sweet spot of sport (and of life).

The best teams, from a historical perspective, are the ones who overcame adversity to triumph.

The ones who got on a roll and just kept rolling, often don't get as much fanfare at the time, and are seldom given as much mention in history, as the underdogs, the upstarts, the risen dead who find a way to stay in the game until someone makes something happen—often within seconds of the end of time.

The survival of the fittest isn't a newsflash. A walking corpse, on the other hand...  especially in our Judeo-Christian culture, in and even more in America, we are partial to the moment that transforms Good Friday into Easter Sunday, slavery into Exodus, colonial servitude into national independence.

And that, I believe, is because we are the progeny of underdogs, of pilgrims, pioneers, prisoners, and paupers, refusing to fail, refusing to accept others' assessments of our abilities, our entitlements, or our chances, refusing to give up and stay down as the doctor on call is about to pull the plug and log the time of death.

There's just something about that moment when nothing matters because everything matters, when it has to be all or nothing because there are no incremental choices, when we shoot the moon, go for broke, bet the farm (add your own cliche) and do or die trying.

So, as tenuous as team fortunes appear superficially, being on the verge seems to be the preferred status for Chicago's team. The Red Stars find a way to win the games they have to. They find a way to score to win the games they have to. But only, it seems, when they have to.