Jane

I was selected to be a manager of a soccer team at my school. If it wasn’t hard enough to be a non-athlete amongst very talented athletes, I was also the only girl as it was the men’s soccer team. In the beginning, I think my biggest challenge was not figuring out what I needed to do (after all, I’ve played soccer and I’ve managed other teams so I knew the tasks), but how would I fit in on this team. They had a particular ethos that’s unlike other teams I’ve been around. They behaved as an organization as McPhee described it. New members were trained in the team’s ethos (“work until utter exhaustion.”) No one was allowed to phone it in, not coaches, players, or as I learned, managers. Even team meetings were more like strategy sessions as coaches discussed theories and any individuals could add to the collective sensemaking. Each person had a task and duty and while I’m not sure the load was evenly shared, they did seem to talk about it a lot and made fewer assumptions. On a campus where soccer isn’t one of the banner sports, the team tried hard to position themselves as different from the other athletes on campus. But, I really saw this organizing come to a head during games. Each member has to stand on the sidelines—no one is allowed to sit or disengage. Whatever happened on the field, everyone witnesses. My first day on the sidelines, I tried to stay out of the way as I thought I wasn’t really a member of this team. Well, the other members of this organization let me have it and would not tolerate my self-selected distancing behavior. To be a member of this team means you stand on the line. Now, I know what it means to be a member of this organization and I know what my job is.