My Favorite Martin (No I in Team)

My coach recently asked me what makes a team successful.

A team can be a funny thing: a little social system within itself, an organism all its own. Analyzing one's own experiences on them can be even more difficult, for the valleys are more dismal and the mountains more climactic than any individual pursuit.

I have had the fortune of being part of three Harvard men's swimming and diving teams that have won conference titles and had varying success at the NCAA Championships, but what made some perform better than others is a little more difficult to figure out than I originally planned.

Of course--since I am writing this column--I have thought it through and come up with an elementary answer. This answer does not come from one isolated aspect of sport or team, but a healthy interaction between a number of factors.

First and foremost, a team needs what Queen Latifah would call U-N-I-T-Y. (That's a unity.) This does not come from eating meals together or partying together or even living together.

Unity on a sports team comes from--I realize it sounds corny--genuine caring about the well-being of teammates. The secret formula to team-building still eludes most coaches and athletes, but if a team is comprised of people interested in each other on a personal as well as an athletic level, unity is just around the corner.

Now, when I talk about unity I am not talking about conformity. This is crucial. A team consists of individuals that differ in interests, talents, and tastes. God knows we don't want 41 Tim Martins to be a team, it would simply be unbearable.

This oneness of the team does not come easily, make no mistake about that, and sometimes a few people indeed will never relinquish individual interest for team solidarity. However, it must come because it permeates every other aspect of the team, including competition.

Next up for the successful team is overcoming adversity, an essential step. There is no such thing as a "perfect season," despite what the team's final record may say.

Inevitably, there will be team fissures, individual failures, team failures, and who knows what else. It happens every season to every team, and must be overcome to eventually win.

If a team wants to win, wrinkles must be ironed out. Unfortunately, a team cannot get to step two, overcoming adversity, without first conquering step one, unity. A feeling of solidarity provides the heat and a drive for perfection the steam (pardon the bad metaphors).

And this brings us to the third factor. None of this matters without an intense work ethic and a dedication to success. Nobody enjoys pain, nobody enjoys exhaustion, but everyone on that team must endure those trials if they really want to enjoy winning.

This hard work flowers from that unity and ability to overcome, for no athlete wants to carry his or her whole team if it is in turmoil and has given up.

And what do these three things--unity, overcoming adversity, work ethic--combine to do? They instill a fighting mentality in the team and individual athlete. It makes someone want to win so fervently that he or she is willing to do anything (anything legal, of course) to do it.

Adrenaline does not magically arise before competition. It comes from these factors commingling and urging on incredible performance.

There are a lot more factors, but these three are certainly basics vital to winning.

It feels much better to be at NCAA's with eight teammates who have found that unity, ability to overcome, and work ethic to achieve that team goal, than to have an apathetic group of strangers.

In that extremely special environment, the individual achievements come naturally and without thought as they fight for the team.

There is an indescribable high when you are part of a victorious team, a tingling in the skin, a numbing of the brain, a general disorientation of all senses.

That feeling, those few moments of ecstasy, drive thousands of people to combine their efforts with the only certain commonality of the group being the single goal of winning.