What is resiliency? It is the ability to bend, but not break, only to then bounce back.
It is to face a challenge so trying it pushes you to your depths, only it cannot submerge you.
It is to conquer the odds in seemingly untenable situations.
It is the story of three Stanford sports teams.
Let’s take a gander. Men’s volleyball is a good place to start.
The Cardinal is the top seed in the four-team NCAA Tournament, which will take place at Maples this weekend. But just three years ago, before Stanford could dispatch opponents with relative ease, the program was in a hole that appeared insurmountable.
In 2007, Stanford finished a measly 3-25 and last in the MPSF. The Cardinal’s last NCAA appearance, in 1997, was drifting further from memory and the thought of approaching that level of play again was even more fleeting. So what happened? Current seniors like Evan Romero and Kawika Shoji powered a resurgence that has landed the Cardinal on top of the MPSF in short order.
This was accentuated by Saturday’s victory over Cal State Northridge on Saturday night. Stanford won in straight sets over a team that it had yet to beat this season, and had only beaten once in its past eight attempts. The Cardinal downed a squad that had owned Stanford, a squad that had finished ranked in the top 10 in each of the past six seasons. And in doing so, the Cardinal achieved an NCAA berth quicker than most anyone believed possible.
And that was even with a heartbreaking loss along the way. Al Roderigues, an assistant coach for 18 years, died from stomach cancer in March. The players have sewn “Al” onto the right arms of their jerseys; his memory is the motivating factor for the team.
In the span of just a few years, the team has faced tragedy off the court and tribulations on it, and yet it stands two contests away from an NCAA championship.
Resiliency.
A year ago, the women’s lacrosse team gathered in Jimmy V’s Cafe to see where it would be seeded in the NCAA Tournament. The players watched the selection show, and waited for their name to be called. It never came. Despite arguably the best season in school history, which included its fifth straight MPSF title, the Cardinal was left out of the dance. Theories abounded — the largest being that of coastal bias in a sport that has its greatest hotbeds in the east — but the disappointment was palpable.
Instead of taking their sticks and going home, the players pushed even further this season. The MPSF, for the first time, received an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament; the Cardinal was determined to seize it. Sunday presented that opportunity, but despite an early lead in the MPSF championship game, Stanford found itself trailing the Denver Pioneers in overtime.
With less than 30 seconds left in the extra period, the Cardinal tied the game. The match headed to sudden death, and with five seconds left, junior Karen Nesbitt scored the game-winner — her third goal of the contest.
Last May, Stanford was faced with immense disappointment; now, the Cardinal will head to the NCAA Tournament, where it will face Massachusetts in the play-in game, at home, on Saturday.
Resiliency.
The women’s rugby team was downed in the national championship by Penn State, but just getting there required an impressive display of heart. The Cardinal beat Brown, 43-32, in a wild semifinal match, accentuated no better than by an impressive stand to keep the Bears off the board at the end of the first half.
As time expired on the stadium clock — the referee did not have the same running time, which meant that play continued even after the scoreboard read 00:00 — the Bears, down 12-8, advanced to within a couple of feet of the try line. In a contest in which it seemed that every time a team came close to scoring, it did, the Cardinal put up a wall that became impenetrable. The Bears tried pushing forward with brute aggression; no luck. The Bears tried sweeping to the outside; no dice. As the crowd eagerly awaited the whistle to send the teams to the break, Stanford held, and then held again. The result was a halftime lead that became crucial — Brown had the advantage early in the second period, and with another try under its belt, could have inflicted more long-lasting damage.
But Stanford persevered.
Stanford was resilient.
Despite all the odds being against him, Wyndam Makowsky just wrote a non-football-related column. Congratulate him on his resiliency at makowsky “at” stanford.edu.