There’s a lot of things that happen in team sports. But there’s always one thing that can kill a team and cause them to fail when they need to succeed: respect.
With the way our brains are fried and how we view things, we’re not going to always like each other. That’s just a fact. You’ll meet some people you can be best friends with, or just people that you’re cool with and don’t mind hanging out. Then you meet people you can’t stand at all. It might even just be worse with that. And to then make those matters worse, they may be close by you. They may just be at work or at your school, and you may not speak to them all the time because you can’t stand their attitude or their quirk or whatever. Then your boss or your professor tells you to work on a project together. That’s not good. Now you have to spend a good amount of time with someone you can’t get along with. How the heck can you get through a project with a person you can’t stand?
Well, for starters, you have to toss whatever you don’t like about the person out the door and complete the project, because that takes more importance. At the very least, you have to be able to respect the person enough that you can rely on them to complete what’s needed. If you can’t get along, you can kiss your job or a chance at a high grade goodbye. And all because getting along for an extended period of time was too much.
This scenario plays out in most professions, and it played out in this profession called High School Girls Lacrosse. Considering Fujioka barely has advantages compared to Choran, for Sakurai to have even found a small one he could somehow take advantage of can be considered a miracle. But it basically depended on having the right players (Unari and Sanari) and a player being petty enough to bring her issues on the field (Momo) that allowed Fujioka to actually score against Choran. All in all, Momo does not respect Makoto. But in sports, you almost have to respect who you happen to be teammates with. You won’t be able to get along with everyone, but you can almost certainly respect everyone enough in order to accomplish their jobs.
Momo didn’t quite get the picture on that front. And based on her attitude, it’s a wonder if she will remember to change that attitude if she gets put into that situation again. Otherwise, I think I can also take this as a reward for hard work. I still don’t see Fujioka winning (surely Sakurai can’t be the real difference right?), but the hard work finally paid off with a score, and that should get them pumped up for a bit.
