Finding Ourselves in Failure

​November 9th, 2025​

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Reflections from playing lacrosse at Stanford. Mental resets, accountability, leveraging ignorance, and embracing uncertainty.

Fired up for the season ahead. ​

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I. Pressure​​​​​​​
 

Just another game. Track the ball. Step to the ball. Track the ball. Step to the ball. With 15 minutes until the opening whistle, the same series of thoughts flow through my mind. My hearing slowly starts to blur, only picking up on the occasional thumps of the EDM beat drops coming from the stadium speakers. Coach Jepsen warms me up with a few more shots before calling me aside to discuss our new transition tactics. Stanford never played Oregon before so we had spent a decent amount of time strategizing to adapt to Oregon’s high-press play. With minutes away from the start, however, none of these things really mattered to me. As a lacrosse goalie, I’m only thinking about tracking the ball, stepping to the ball, and stopping the ball. Nothing more. Use your stick, helmet, gloves, calves, feet, whatever. Just stop the ball. 

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Oregon wins the first possession and swings the ball across to their star attack. Our defense struggles to keep in position and opens up a wide gap. Shot. The ball brushes off my right shoulder and finds the back of the net. Gotta save those. Track the ball. Wake the fuck up. In just minutes, another turnover leads to a counterattack for the Ducks. I’m 1-on-1 with an attackman. Shot. Ball bounces right through my legs. Step to the ball. You waited way too long there. I’m struggling to reset mentally. Breathe. Game just started. Breathe. You gotta save those. Come on. Our attack can’t seem to get the ball around today either. Oregon wins a tough ground-ball battle and we’re defending again. I yell out a string of words from the cage to try and keep some composure: “Who’s hot? Ryan, one behind you. Who’s got middle? Ball top center. DJ, screen coming left!” None of this helps when the Oregon shooter decides to just fire from the 15-yard line. Shot. The ball takes a brutal bounce and flies right by me. How have I missed that? My eyes could track the ball but everything else was in delay. Coach Jepsen calls a time out. Shit. 

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Lacrosse is one of those sports where failing is a normal part of the game, especially as a goalie. Liam Entenmann, arguably the greatest goalie in Notre Dame history, had a 57% save percentage his final year in college. Logan McNaney, the starting goalie for Maryland’s National Championship team, recorded a 50.3% save percentage in what was considered one of his best seasons of college lacrosse. The standards are even lower in professional leagues. Matt DeLuca of the Philadelphia Waterdogs is averaging a 47% save percentage this season and is still considered to be one of the league’s elite goalies. The nature of lacrosse is just different to other sports such as soccer or ice hockey where goalies are expected to save most if not every shot in a game. 

 

In this sense, failure is normal and, as odd as it sounds, expected. At a competitive level, you will never have a perfect game as a goalie. Again, that’s just the nature of the game. Failing becomes part of the routine and you gradually learn to mentally reset after every shot. But embracing this mindset is easier said than done. When you let in three consecutive goals at the start of the game that you arguably should have saved, mentally resetting is not easy. When you let in a 15-yard shot, you feel like dropping the stick and letting your other goalie step in. No one on the team will outright blame you for a goal, but you feel the pressure breathing down your neck. Sure, you can make yourself feel better by blaming a deflection or a “weird” bounce but ultimately some shots just have to be saved. It’s a special feeling to know that you’re the last line of defense. Whatever happens on the field, you have the ability to shift the game’s momentum. But this feeling can also generate pressure that makes you want to walk off the field and question why you fell in love with this position in the first place. 

 

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Coach Jepsen spends most of the time-out critiquing our offensive ball movement. I see Sutton warm up next to our huddle and immediately think I’m getting subbed off for the quarter. Goalies rarely get switched before half-time but it does happen. Just this past year, UVA goalie Matt Nunes was replaced by the backup less than seven minutes into the NCAA quarterfinal game against Johns Hopkins after letting in four consecutive goals. But as Coach wraps up his talk, there’s no mention of substitutes. He simply taps my helmet and asks, “Everything good?” I give him a quick nod and try to forget about the first ten minutes. Both he and I know that the time-out was really meant for me to catch a breather and properly reset. I give Coach another nod and head back to the cage. At this point, I’m only focusing on making it to the end of the quarter. Just five more minutes. Stay in it. No goals. Just five more minutes.

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II. The Beautiful Struggle

 

In the 1870s, tunneling experts devised a plan for a railway track that would connect the village of Göschenen with the region of Airolo. The building process required tunneling through the Swiss Alps, posing several technical and geographic challenges. Louis Favre, a well-respected businessman, and other engineering veterans predicted that piercing through the Alps (which mostly consisted of softer rocks) would still be very straightforward.

 

Tunneling the Alps turned out to be a tragedy. The initiative ended up taking triple the amount of time to finalize. A major accident during the construction phase even cost 200 lives. If all the intelligent minds knew how difficult the project would actually be, they would never have proposed the idea. But, if they had not, local transport would have stagnated without a tunnel that connected the North Sea with the Mediterranean. Trade around the area would have declined without the ports of Belgium and Germany connected to Genoa. So was ignorance a barrier to improvement or a requirement for it? 

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German theorist Albert Hirschman wrestled with that very question when he came up with “The Hiding Hand” framework. According to Hirschman, we don’t necessarily seek challenges. Instead we embrace new opportunities because, strangely, many responsibilities appear far more doable than they will actually turn out to be. Author Malcolm Gladwell ("The Gift of Doubt") and economic geographer Bent Flyvbjerg ("The Fallacy of Beneficial Ignorance") have also written great pieces on this phenomenon. Entrepreneurs, for example, frequently take leaps but they deceive themselves into thinking that what they are attempting is not actually a risk. Then, as they gradually move past the halfway mark, they meet reality––and, since they are too “deep” at this point of their journey, they simply can’t back off. That’s actually how I ended up playing goalie in lacrosse: ignorance.

 

Growing up, I spent most of my time playing soccer, had a brief swimming career in middle school, and immersed myself in long-distance running. I didn’t even play goalie in soccer -- I loved dominating the midfield, finding the sweet spot between attacking and defending. But it became more challenging to balance academics and sports as South Korea never fully embraced the concept of a “student athlete” that could enjoy both worlds. From a young age, there was pressure to choose one world and leave another behind. After a series of conversations with coaches in youth academies, my older brother and I decided to give the athletic path a shot with Busan IPark FC. This meant we would miss significant time away from school for early morning practices, evening matches, and travel. I enjoyed the intense level of soccer, traveling across Asia, and bonding with other athletes from my city but knew that going down this route was extremely risky. A major injury or failing to make the cut for the men’s squad later on would leave me with limited options in the future. And so we turned to schooling options abroad where I could continue to play the sports that I love while making sure that education was an integral part of my life. My brother shared the same concerns and found this healthy balance in an international school close to home.

 

When I settled at a boarding school in New Jersey, lacrosse was a very foreign sport for me. No one played the game back home. Sports-wise, I was there for soccer and track anyway. And with the track season in the spring, I never was able to get my hands on lacrosse. Heading into Stanford, I had no intention of playing until many of my friends convinced me to come out for fun in the fall. The team also needed an extra goalie on the roster, so I thought why not. I grabbed my soccer cleats, borrowed my dormmate’s stick and gloves, found a spare helmet in the equipment room and dived in. I quickly learned that the goalie position had the most manageable learning curve for a newcomer. You don’t need crazy stick skills or an insane lacrosse IQ. You just need to throw your body on the line and save the ball. Sure, it was daunting the first few times jumping in cage, but I didn’t think too much of it. I was simply trying to have a good time with my friends. But pretty soon, I was too invested in my progress and the sport as a whole to back away easily. Ignorance in this case was most definitely a prerequisite for improvement.   ​

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***

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Oregon is still up by three. The first quarter wraps up slightly better. No more goals and a couple decent outlet passes that help our team quickly transition and ramp up the pace of play. A quick save at the start of the second quarter bumps me up from a 0% save percentage. I still can’t get over the horrible start to the game. Especially letting in that 15-yard shot. Just when I think I’ve gradually reset, the Ducks earn a scoring opportunity with a man-up play. They feed the ball to their main attack player before one of our defensemen can cover him. He fakes his first shot and fires from three yards. Ball pierces right. I completely misread and punch left. Ryan, one of our defenders, gives me one of those “nothing we can do there” look.

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III. “This Too Shall Pass”

 

“This too shall pass.” I came across this 13th century Persian adage during a philosophy seminar class in high school. I was struck by this unique perspective on life that highlights how both our positive and negative moments are temporary. If you’re going through a challenging period, you know that eventually times will get better. If you’re enjoying success, you also know that feelings of excitement and happiness will eventually fade. This doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t embrace the present. “This too shall pass” is not a dismissal of your emotions but a reminder to not let those emotions overwhelm you. Celebrate your accomplishments, be disappointed with a mistake, or dwell on whatever bothers you in the moment. But know that time ultimately neutralizes your experiences. Quite unexpectedly, this mindset greatly changed the way I approached lacrosse as well. If I made a save, I needed to reset and get over that temporary joy to prepare for the next play. If I let in a goal, I needed to quickly reset and focus on the next shot. There’s a great sense of liberation when you embrace that nothing is permanent. A save or victory becomes less intoxicating. A failed save loses some of its sharp edges. You gradually learn to navigate the waves of joy and pain.

 

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The third quarter kicks off in chaos. We manage to scrap a goal but an unnecessary slap check on our end means we are “man down” for 2 minutes. The midfielder who scored the 15-yard goal in the first quarter gets ready for the same shot. As he weaves through the left-hand side, I don’t take my eyes off his stick. His right foot plants, left foot drags across the turf, and reloads. Shot. I feel a thump and see that the rubber ball is sitting in the pocket of my stick. A quick outlet pass gets our attack going. The ball is on the other side of the field but I am right back in my “ready” stance. Just before the quarter ends, the Ducks somehow take control of a Hail Mary pass from their goalie. We’re slow to track back to defend the counter. With seconds on the clock, the attacker dodges out of traffic and fires a bouncer from the 7-yard line. Shot. I flinch. My eyes shut for a split second. Muscle memory kicks in and I still somehow track where the ball is going. Oregon ends the quarter scoreless.     

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“This too shall pass” reminds me that our lives are not linear narratives but more an improvisation. The thrill doesn’t come from maintaining constant control over what we do but our ability to riff and find beauty in chaos––when moments of uncertainty unexpectedly become harmonious. When an attacker shoots a ball, it’s impossible to track exactly where it’ll land: an awkward bounce or curves on a trajectory keep you on your toes. The ball doesn’t just travel the way you want it to; it negotiates with the wind, gravity, and all the little imperfections that throw you off. For some saves, you’re simply guessing where the ball will be. It’s this mix of instinct and skill that helps you address uncertainty. You grow comfortable with the idea that you can try without having to succeed. You can seek answers even when solutions are not promised. Again, ignorance can be a prerequisite for improvement rather than an obstacle. Not having full control sometimes and not knowing the outcomes ultimately encourages us to further explore.

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One way this exploration manifested was my work in civic engagement and the Democracy Day initiative. After noticing that my high school community often seemed detached from the “outside” world when it came to current events and politics, my friends and I proposed to the administration that we take a day off of classes on Election Day and fill that day with civic engagement programming. In a matter of months, we put together proposal presentations, published research on youth civics education, met countless times with faculty, organized webinars with peer schools, and finally got our initiative approved. None of us expected that this passion project that stemmed from a late-night conversation after study hall would a) actually get implemented and b) dominate the majority of our junior and senior years. We were ignorant; but this ignorance and uncertainty made it possible for us to freely chase our goals and fall in love with a new cause.

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Sutton makes a few incredible saves in the final quarter but we come up short against Oregon. Something just didn’t seem to click that day for both our offense and defense. Sutton and I sigh as we compare the red-soon-to-be-purple bruises peppered on our shins and thighs. On our trip back to Stanford, I’m left thinking why I spend my weekends going through this chaotic mental and physical journey. I could be spending time hanging out with friends, editing my philosophy paper, cathing up on sleep, or working through practice problems for my upcoming Econ midterm. But sports offers you lessons that you simply cannot learn in the classroom. Learning to control uncertainty. Using ignorance to your advantage. Taking accountability. Finding yourself in failure. Sports encourage us to transform these abstract concepts of resilience and uncertainty into something tangible: a messy but elegant process of breaking down and carefully reassembling ourselves. 

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