The Sky Townies Have Feelings Too
With one quarter of the season down, we take a break to discuss our feelings
The Sky are finally getting some much-needed down time after playing four games in eight days. Having finished exactly a quarter of the season, the team is sitting at 5-5.
It’s kind of interesting to think about a quarter of a season like you would a quarter of a basketball game. What would the players be saying in the time-out? What are the takeaways?
Tonight we play the Indiana Fever again. The Sky Townies are hoping for slightly lower heart rates than our first match-up and that our team respects that Fever rookie Aliyah Boston is good at basketball.
Here’s what our Lead Basketball Analyst would be saying in the huddle at this point in the season:
“Our injured roster felt like we got tired during the last two road games against the Sparks and the Aces. Again, we don’t need to freak out, but we do need to be smart about our hardship contracts with all of our injuries. I loved our Liberty and Fever comebacks though and think those wins were huge here in the first quarter of the season.”
And, because this will be a feelings-centric post, here are our LBA’s feelings about watching Candace Parker in an Aces jersey:
“It was hurtful. When she played for the Sky, I felt like she had to be “The Man” and it feels like she is taking the easy way out late in her career. Did she really go to the Aces because she wanted to be closer to family and because she wanted her own locker? Or did she want to be a role player as an older league vet? Now, she can let A’ja Wilson and the other Aces stars do the work for her.”
The Townies Have Feelings Too
The Townies wish to circle back to the darkest moment of the season so far: our favorite sixth-man Rebekah Gardner's injury in our home opener.
When Gardner got injured, it brought back bad memories of a season-ending thumb surgery I once had my sophomore year of college.
Even though the fracture wasn't my fault, I felt guilty for sitting out. Even though I was still on the team, I felt isolated. Even though I was still an athlete, I felt stripped of my identity.
I was thinking about all this after the game, and it bothered me. I wanted to be able to go to the bar after the game like a regular sports fan. You know: drink a beer, analyze and complain a little bit, and then go home. I wanted to be able to sympathize with an injured player without it getting personal.
One Townie associate responded: So do you not want to be emotionally impacted by things?
I've thought about that question a lot the past couple of weeks.
Do I want to be impacted–in a deep way–by the Chicago Sky? Do I have a choice?
The Townies are fans, but we are also coaches and former college athletes. Most importantly, the Townies are teammates. Watching professional basketball games and working on a WNBA newsletter together inevitably brings back dynamics from our own playing careers. Sometimes that’s awesome, but sometimes it’s hard. We did not have a sports psychologist at our Division III college and are therefore carrying the rough stuff with us still today!
After Gardner was carried off the court and the game ended, the Townies stayed in our seats. It felt like we were in the locker room after a close loss in college, processing what happened and letting ourselves be sad. Nobody suggested we leave Wintrust until ten or fifteen minutes had passed.
The reality is: the Townies are not capable of watching the Sky like “regular sports fans.” But hey, that’s probably a good thing. In fact, I have a big problem with the way that we, as a society, watch sports! We’ll get into that in later issues, but it has to do with this quote from one of my favorite books, Playing in the Zone: Exploring the Spiritual Dimension of Sports:
“We consume sports like we consume Big Macs. And in doing so, the intrinsic joys and inner life are lost.”
Something that the Townies would like to consider this season is: what does it really mean to be a good sports fan?
Does it mean we need to stop sh*tting on Candace?
And even if Sky games are not Big Macs, can the good people of Wintrust still please add more hot dog toppings to the available options because relish is not enough?
From the Voice of Gen Z/Jewel-Osco Dance Off Champion, thinking about what it means to “be a good fan:”
“I was thinking about moments when I go to Wintrust and feel pessimistic. I feel like the players can feel my skepticism in the air and that I have try and feign confidence in the same way I do as a coach. I feel like with the team this year, some variable drives our wild ups and downs—beating the Liberty handily to playing inconsistent against mediocre teams. And as a fan, I want desperately to contribute to whatever that variable is. So I tell myself that it’s my energy in the arena. Or that I’m bad luck because when I watch we lose. But I think it might be a projection of my college athlete days, when I did have be ability to impact the game. As a fan, it’s hard to let go of that. It’s hard coming to terms with the fact that the fate of our team (and therefore my own happiness lol) is out of my control. But I keep telling myself if I just put enough good Sky charismatic energy into the WNBA atmosphere then our team can channel our streaky spurts to prove the doubters wrong.”
I think it’s interesting she brings up the issue of control here. How often in life do our internal struggles relate to accepting what we cannot control? Probably pretty often.
Our next game is TODAY Thursday June 15th @ 7p.m. against the Indiana Fever at Wintrust Arena!!! See you all there.