The Long Defeat: Finding purpose when outmatched in a tourney

(featured image courtesy of Love n’ Axes. I was exhauuusted.)

Gang. Dear readers. Throwkin. It should come as no great surprise to any of you that I’m not an amazing thrower. Sure, I do alright. I’ve got some achievements under my ever-widening (from gravy, not achievements) belt. But I’m not, you know, anywhere close to a threat to most throwers. Point in fact, I often find myself at the very bottom of the very top of whatever tier system is set up for axe throwing. And while this has caused me no shortage of frustration in the past, I’ve come to shift my thinking about what it means, and what I can do about it. As ever, I turned to John Ronald Reuel Tolkien for the path forward.

Ol’ JRR had, as part of a core focus in his little-known work, an exploration of “The Long Defeat.” The idea is way too big to explain in a lil’ blog post, but a part of it can best be explained as: even if you know things aren’t going to be good, and you’re not going to succeed in whatever you’re doing, it’s your job to keep going. It’s you’re job (unless you’re, you know, on the side of “evil”), to continue trying to change things for the better. Knowing full well you’re not going to manage it.

Now, what does this have to do with axe throwing. Chances are, almost nothing. But I, like many little round men, grew up with LoTR and The Hobbit, and I inherently draw everyting in my life back to it. You know. As one does.

This past weekend, whist Mollie and I were snapping thousands of pictures at the Urban Open and getting progressively more and more exhausted, I ALSO threw in the Swiss tourney (in the highest gottam tier) and the Open itself.

And, dear reader, I did not win much. Not much at all. Point in fact, I only won a single match, and that was against someone who didn’t really want to be throwing anymore.

COULDN’T win. Didn’t want to cry. Enter: A secret, third thing

I don’t want you to think I had any illusions about how I’d do. I knew I wouldn’t do well in the Open. And as soon as I saw I was in the tippy-top tier of the Swiss, I knew I was donked, too.

So that left me with some big choices: to get frustrated with my throwing/self, become a nightmare to anyone I threw against, or to become a delight to everyone I threw against.

I went with a lot of the third option (a delight), with a splash of the second (nightmare). I became a delightful nightmare. A Delightmare.

A simple premise/goal

Knowing it’s likely you’re going to lose a bunch of matches is a gift, really. It means I’m not gonna be blindsided by much. With that foreknowledge, I stepped into the arena with some of the very best in the chucking business, and friends, I was dead right: 4 losses out of 5. But it wasn’t a cake walk for most (save for Huckabella, who soundly beat me even after I almost crushed her with a lane divider. I won’t be elaborating).

I took most opponents five rounds. I hit (a lot) of my clutches. I hopefully gave those competitors a moment of pause, somewhere in their victories, to consider that the second-loweest-seeded thrower could still give them a fight. And if that did happen, then I succeeded in my failure. And throwkin, that’s a pretty good feeling despite all the loss.

The goal for the day wasn’t to win – I knew that was kinda out of my reach barring some miraculous outbreak of temporary blindness in all my matches. No, my goal was to bring in some lighthearted, league-esque throwing. I joked around, I took every match as practice. I celebrated my opponents more than myself.

And the craziest thing happened: I really, really enjoyed myself. I had a fun, easygoing time. This could have been because every match was also a rare moment where I wasn’t taking thousands of pictures, but either way: it was really nice.

The Open Itself: Redux

I never have big expectations when I throw at the Open itself, and this time around was no different. Well, I guess a little different, as my priorities were on everything but throwing well. So I just rinsed and repeated. I laughed a lot during my matches, I played the goof. And the net result was a chance to get back to what I was being paid to do, and having a great time at the tourney.

I guess what I’m trying to get at is this: The Urban Open, on the whole, was one of the first times I didn’t need to will a meaning out of my poor throwing. I didn’t need to come up with some internalized excuse or frustration or whatever for what was going on. I knew what I was stepping into, and I changed my own definition of what success looked like. It made the whole thing much more fun, more engaging and dare I say it, more meaningful.

I know I’m getting better at this sport, this weekend’s performance aside, but I don’t yet need to perform amazingly all the time. And that kinda freedom feels really, really nice. I can head into something like the Open with every expectation to lose, and still find the little victories in everything else. And having figured that out, I know I can enjoy the whole, goofy thing a lot more.