The Inside Hip

Daily Letter · Mindset Operating System · 8:42 PM

FATHOM THIS

There is a part of the brain called the amygdala whose entire job is to decide what gets remembered forever and what gets quietly discarded by morning.

It does not make that decision based on importance in any rational sense. It makes it based on emotional charge. The more intensely something registers in the moment — fear, embarrassment, heartbreak, the specific shame of failing in front of people who were counting on you — the more aggressively the brain tags it, consolidates it, and files it somewhere it can be retrieved in full color decades later.

This is why you can forget what you had for lunch on Tuesday and still see, with total clarity, the exact angle of a missed shot from sixteen years ago.

It is not a flaw in the system. It is the system working exactly as designed. The brain is not trying to torture you with the memory of the moment you fell short. It is trying to make sure you never forget the lesson hiding inside it. Pain is the brain's oldest teaching method, long before anyone invented a classroom.

The question worth asking is not why the memory stays so vivid. The question is what you do with the vividness once it is yours to keep.

FIELD REPORT | The Inside Hip

One of the most underrated focal points in sports is not the ball.

It is the inside hip.

Watch an offensive dodger attack downhill. Watch a midfielder in transition. Watch a defenseman trying to contain space. The eyes naturally drift to the stick, the shoulders, even the head. But the body tells the truth before any of those do. The inside hip reveals where a player is actually going. Weight transfer. Agility. Deceleration. Recovery. If the hip changes direction, everything else follows it eventually — the stick, the shoulders, the play itself.

Great players do not chase movement. They recognize intention. Movement is often won before speed is ever required.

Spring of 2009. Towson versus Johns Hopkins. Hopkins was a top ten team. We were fighting inside the top twenty and had not beaten them in years. Baltimore knew the rivalry.

I was a senior captain playing some of the best lacrosse of my career — not because of goals or points, but because I had fallen in love with everything that happened between the blue lines. Running shots out. Winning possessions. Fighting for ground balls. Communicating. Doing the things that rarely show up in a box score but decide games anyway.

Late in the fourth quarter, tied game, I made a mistake. Cleared the ball down the sideline, got inside the restraining box, saw an angle I thought I could exploit. Instead of moving the ball I tried to turn the corner. My inside foot slipped. Save. Possession back to Hopkins. Coach Seaman had a different opinion of what I should have done with that ball.

He was right.

Regulation ended. Then one overtime. Then another. If you have played long enough you know momentum has a feeling. You can hear it. The ground balls bounce your way. The sideline gets louder. The game starts leaning in your direction and you can feel the pressure building on the other side of the field before anything official has happened.

Then Hopkins got possession. One of their midfielders caught the ball. Routine play. He liked his right hand. He swept down the left alley. He rolled back.

And I recognized it immediately. Not because I was watching his stick. Not because I was watching his eyes. I was watching his inside hip.

As he rolled, I rolled. As his shoulders loaded, I loaded. I could see the shot coming. I knew where his hands would be. I matched my stick to his. I got there.

I blocked it. Or so I thought.

Instead of dropping to the turf, the shot caught the right side of my helmet. I can still see it. Clear as day. The deflection changed the angle. Our goalie had moved to the left pipe, tracking the original shot. The ball redirected. Inside the right pipe.

Game over. Second overtime. Johns Hopkins wins.

I had gotten beat. Or at least that is what I told myself.

I walked off the field trying not to show anything. Not to the stands. Not to my family. Not to my teammates. I made it to the showers before my helmet hit the floor. It shattered. Not because the helmet was weak. Because I was — at least that is how it felt at the time.

I stayed in the locker room longer than everyone else. Did not eat. Did not want to talk. And I carried that moment with me. Truthfully, I still do. But not as a negative anymore. As a reminder.

Because somewhere between that locker room and today, I realized something. The game was not trying to embarrass me. It was educating me. Sports have a way of teaching lessons that cannot be learned through books, podcasts, or motivational quotes. You cannot download humility. You cannot outsource disappointment. You cannot skip failure. And you certainly cannot fake leadership.

The field, the court, the pitch, the pool — they eventually ask all of us the same question. What happens when your best is not enough?

Not every story gets a Hollywood ending. Not every captain gets to walk off a winner. Sometimes your last memory as a player is one you would rewrite a thousand times if you could. But life has a funny way of repurposing pain.

Now, whenever I blow the whistle and gather players around before practice, I think about moments like that one. Not the wins. Not the goals. Not the headlines. The moments. Because those moments became part of me.

At twenty-one I thought I had failed as a captain. At thirty-eight I think something different. Maybe leadership is not being perfect. Maybe leadership is having the courage to keep serving after you have already seen yourself fall short — in front of everyone, with no way to hide it.

Maybe the moments that haunt us eventually become the moments that help us guide someone else through theirs.

And maybe that is what sports were always for. Not trophies. Not rankings. Not applause. Preparation. For business. For marriage. For fatherhood. For loss. For life.

Take from it what you will. But that one is real for me, and I wanted to give it to you tonight exactly as it happened.

MINDSET OS

Forty-five nights.

Forty-five nights of sitting down at this desk and telling you something true instead of something polished. I did not know what this would become when letter one went out. I knew I needed to write it more than I knew what writing it would do to me.

Here is what I have not said directly until tonight. This has been therapy. Not metaphorically. Actually. Writing about the locker room in 2009 — typing it out in full instead of carrying it as a private weight I managed alone for sixteen years — did something that no conversation about it ever did. It moved the memory from somewhere it had been quietly running my nervous system into somewhere I could finally look at it without flinching.

I am not telling you this so you feel something about me. I am telling you this because I think most people are carrying their own version of that helmet hitting the floor, and most people never let it out of the locker room.

You do not need to go looking for failure. Life sends enough of it on its own schedule, usually right when you feel the least prepared for it. But when it arrives — and it will — do not waste it. Do not file it away as evidence of who you are. File it as data about what the moment was trying to teach you.

Some of the most painful moments you carry may eventually become the stories you are most grateful to have lived through. Not because the pain stops being real. Because the goal was never to avoid the pain entirely. The goal was always growth — and growth, it turns out, has never once arrived without it.

Find your harbor. Create your lane.

ON ROTATION | What's Playing

Tonight’s Spin: my uncle recommended this artist to me, great stuff. Easy on the ears.

About the Author

Kyle Smedley is the founder of Harbor Lane Holdings, building at the intersection of sport, people, and capital.

Career stops include Events.com, Tourmaline Builders, Lombardi Contracting Corporation, and DPR Construction. Today he leads Atticus Lacrosse Company, working alongside Mad Dog Lacrosse and Ravenscroft School, and Harbor Lane Company, operating across real estate, private equity, and talent placement.

Field & Fathom goes out every night at 8:42 PM.

Reach out directly: [email protected]

Until tomorrow,

Kyle

Founder · Harbor Lane Holdings · Atticus Lacrosse Company

Field & Fathom · Harbor Lane Holdings · Daily

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