At my last job, one of our practices was sports analytics. We did cognitive and personality evaluations of athletes for professional and NCAA teams. At one point, I had done hundreds of semantic analyses that gave us Big Five reads of players, and I had seen a pretty consistent pattern emerge among wide receivers at big programs. I called up our top analyst and said, “What do you make of this? Among wide receivers, I keep seeing really high levels of hedonism and similar self-interested, pleasure-seeking traits.”
He said, “Hmm . . . you may have discovered a new model of athletic performance. Your top guys at the top programs appear to be seeking a constant high—the thrill of huge plays, of scoring, of being the center of attention. The best of them are the most consistent at achieving it.”
I said, “Doesn’t that seem to run counter to team building?”
“Flow is addictive, man. Studies show this. It’s more powerful than cocaine.”
I thought of this last night at the Reggie Lewis Center as Graham finished his heat in the mile. He had finally hit good enough times to land in the fastest heat. When he crossed the finish line, he did one of these (wish I had snapped a photo of it, but I didn’t):
Mind you, it was a Thursday night meet in the dead of winter. It was only a dual, so even though there were kids from all Patriot League schools, he was really only racing against kids from Whitman Hanson. Still, he must have won, right? Wrong. In fact, he finished eleventh out of fourteen in his heat (and eleventh out of forty-two overall). No one else in his heat even reacted when they crossed the line.
So what was the big deal? Well, for one, he set a new personal record. More significant, that personal record broke the five-minute barrier—he ran 4:58:31. (Maybe without showboating it would have been 4:57 . . . just saying.) In doing so, he became the first freshman in the Patriot League this year to break the five-minute barrier. When Lauren posted about it on Facebook, the father of one of Grant’s former teammates commented, “I was so elated after breaking 5 minutes my freshman year that I ran 5 miles home afterwards for a cool down.”
If Graham were a football player, he’d have to be a wide receiver. When he was a U8 soccer player, he scored a goal, then did a cartwheel. Another time, he did a shin-pad slide. Another time, he lay down on his left side and “ran” in a circle around his left shoulder.
“You should stop him from doing that,” you’re saying. “Teach him to have class. Plus, he’s going to get his team penalized.” So you think we haven’t tried?
In his eighth grade year, Graham won a big race, and as he crossed the finish line, he did the two-pistols thing with his hands. The high school coach happened to be there. He pulled Graham aside: “You can’t do stuff like that in high school. They’ll disqualify you.”
That guy is now Graham’s coach. Obviously, the lesson stuck.
Is it my favorite thing? No. But I guess there are worse highs that he could be pursuing. My other athletes still often ask me for workout ideas and advice—Graham doesn’t. He runs his own program. On Saturday, he’ll be up at a reasonable hour, and then he’ll be out the door . . . on a ten-mile run. So don’t look at me. As Tony Soprano said, “What are you gonna do?”
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