University of North Carolina Athletics
Walston: The Moment
October 23, 2009 | Football
Oct. 23, 2009
There's a moment that's unique to competitive athletics. A moment brief, yet so full of possibility; a moment on which your immediate future hinges. What's comes next? Either despair or elation, depending on what happens in the moment. Come through, and you'll bask in the afterglow. Come up short, and you'll second-guess everything that came before it.
It's the moment when the game is on the line and immediate destiny lay in the hands of the players. One drive, one shot, one chance - to win. That moment is the reason basketball hoops are erected in driveways. It's why, alone in the backyard, children tossing balls to themselves are provide their own play-by-play, for that one shot at the moment when it's real.
The moment was present Thursday night in Kenan Stadium. With 47 seconds to go in the game, North Carolina got the ball on its own 21, 79 yards away from victory in the first Thursday night game in the program's history. Every football player dreams of the opportunity to win a game on one final drive. For the Tar Heels, this was that opportunity.
"It's unexplainable, because you want to do everything right," tight end Ed Barham said after the game. "You want to run your routes at the right depth, you want to make a big plays, you want to do everything for your team," Barham said.
In the backyard - or the driveway - the hero makes the shot. The hero catches the touchdown pass. The hero hits the home run. In the moment, it doesn't always happen like that.
As the game's final second ticked away, T.J. Yates, trying desperately to find a receiver downfield, was caught and dragged down by Florida State's Markus White. Just like that, the moment was gone. "It's just one of those situations where tonight we were unsuccessful, but we wanted to make a play," Barham said. "We just came up and didn't make it."
In times like these, it's popular to suggest that this is a `teachable moment,' an opportunity to learn from experience and emerge all the better for it. In times like these, it's also hard to be that forward-thinking. There's a 24-hour rule in the Tar Heel locker room. Win or lose, the result is forgotten 24 hours later. Celebrate or hang your head, but a day later, begin again. Somehow, this one feels like it will sting just a bit longer.
"This is going to be a tough one tonight," Barham said. "But there will be big games where we win like this and when a big game we win like this in the next couple of weeks or next year, I'll know how it feels to be on the other end of the stick."
Thursday's moment - so full of promise - is gone. Perhaps the moment will come again someday, the Tar Heels will prevail, and we'll all experience the emotions that accompany capitalizing on it. For now, there is only the sense of opportunity lost.
In the process of building a program, not every step is a pleasant one. Some moments are more painful than others. Sometimes, the hero is wearing the other jersey. Sometimes, it's simply someone else's moment.
Turner Walston is the managing editor of Tar Heel Monthly. Turner's weekly Tar Heel football podcast, The Walkthrough, is available on iTunes.
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