“You Girls Were Always Singing”
How We Learned to Handle Defeat on Long Bus Rides Home from High School Games
Hi friends and welcome newcomers!
The coaches sat in the front of the bus during our long rides to and from Wissahickon High School’s “away” games (field hockey, basketball, lacrosse) in rural Pennsylvania. We girls sat in the back. As we sped over hilly roads, the springy seats would catapult us toward the ceiling at unpredictable angles. We’d ricochet wildly northeast or northwest like broken jack-in-the-boxes, landing in each other’s laps, laughing – and singing.
We always sang. Bouncing on the bouncy seats, proudly wearing uniforms with our school’s name on the front and our numbers on the back, we sang fight songs, summoning the courageous champions we hoped to be. Mighty, mighty warriors were we.
Everywhere we go-oh
People want to know-oh
Whooooo we are-rr
Sooooo we tell ‘em.
We sang together: JV and Varsity, stars and subs. Empowered by team spirit and teen bravado, we sang unselfconsciously so we sounded pretty good: young female voices celebrating our mighty, mighty team that would fight-fight-fight for vict-oh-ree.
When we ran out of fight songs, we’d sing the pop songs they played at school dances. We sang the love songs ironically, crooning to each other to express our affection in this acceptable, mock-affectionate way. One or two girls would harmonize, their voices floating above or below the melody. The rest of us would turn to see where those sweet sounds were coming from, marveling at our teammates’ mysterious ability to sing different, complementary notes.
Our coaches had trained us to win. We knew how to sprint fast. How to fake out opponents. How to calculate the exact trajectory needed to launch a large, orange sphere through a small, distant target. How to smack hockey balls as hard as we could. How to cradle lacrosse sticks close to our hearts. How to pass.
Yet sometimes, of course, we lost. After a loss, we slowly, tearfully climbed the steps into the dark, empty bus. The heavy machine rolled away from the rival high school, gravel crunching noisily beneath us and seats somehow less bouncy than before.
We quietly examined our wounds: bloody knees, bruised ankles, blistered feet.
Wounded pride, too. The coach should have put me in. She should have let me play point guard. She should have called a time out. The refs made a bad call. They made a lot of bad calls.
Sorry I missed that shot.
Don’t even say that! You played great.
We’ll beat them next game. At Regionals. Next year.
As teens, we had already grown acquainted with defeat in other arenas. But athletic losses were more obvious. They provided tallies proving that people who fight, fight, fight, do not necessarily win, win, win. These losses gave us a chance to practice losing, feeling lost, finding our confidence, finding our way. They taught us to be resilient, preparing us for future defeats we could not yet imagine.
And even after losses, during the bus rides home, we sang. After the injury assessments, after the tears and self-recriminations, after the apologies and forgiveness and vows to win next time, we sang and harmonized. By the time the bus pulled back into the school parking lot, we were at peace again, ready for whatever came next.
Singing on buses to and from every game seemed unremarkable until years later, when I ran into a boys’ coach from my high school. He reminisced about hearing girls’ musical voices emerging from open-windowed buses — even after we’d lost. Boys don’t sing on buses, he explained. And male coaches would usually require silence on the bus after a loss to encourage the boys to consider how they had failed. “You girls were always singing,” he said.
Might this be a female superpower, I wonder, this ability to keep singing, even after defeat?
Everywhere we go-oh
People want to know-oh
Who we are.
Might this be who we are: people who win some and lose some, as athletes do, then grieve, debrief, strategize, collaborate, and bounce back, stronger than ever, still singing?
I’m not sure yet.
I’m not singing yet.
It’s an open question.
Other popular Stronger Women stories about high school, loss, grieving, recovery:
Loved this, but thank you especially for the physical memory of springy school bus seats.
OMG. First the writing—it's wonderful. I can see the girls, the bus and hear the singing. Second, the sentiment—I'm not there yet, either. But it's a great goal. So, count me as one who for now is "singing your praises" for both tackling this subject head on and providing a hopeful perspective.