An apology for people on defense

I'm going to apologize to anyone who plays defense because it is so hard to write about defenders. People keep stats for offense and therefore it's really easy to write about offensive players. There are often few stats for people who play defense. It's hard to give them the credit they deserve.

Specifically I'm talking about soccer, field hockey, ice hockey and lacrosse, but in general people who play defense well don't get enough credit for it.

At work I had to work on the biographies for the soccer teams. It was so easy to write about people who were forwards and people with lots of offensive stats. They scored such and such amount of goals in conference play. They had 4 match winning goals etc. etc. For people who played defense. They were a key member of the defense that gave up 1.09 GAA. They started in 19 of 22 matches.

The stuff I was writing about defenders was bland. Nothing stuck out. Nothing that I wrote could possibly capture how these defenders impacted their teams. No writer or announcer is going to go on and on and on about how many games someone played in. They will go on and on about how many goals were scored by that striker and how that compares them to all-time greats. Defenders get the short end of the stick when it comes to statistics and glory.

If your a defender you should pat yourself on the back because quite frankly you will never get the credit you deserve.

People who write sports information often have trouble writing a few lines about defenders who start. If the people who provide the information can't say much then those who write about the game can't say much either. We keep so many offensive stats and so little defensive stats...and when we do keep defensive stats there is usually so little emphasis put on them. It's in many ways unfair. I guess I'd have to say that defenders are the ultimate team players because of the lack of recogniton they get.

I sort of wish we kept track of a stat called "great play, or stopped an attack" for a defender. A statistic that is sort of wishy-washy, like an error in baseball. Make it sort of an opinion statistic. Atleast it's an idea.

Also, I would reccomend that athletes check their own biogpraphies for mistakes. They should log on to their team website and make sure that their information is right. It is really hard to get every piece of information right. Mistakes happen and everyone would like them fixed. If you don't fix them, it will be listed incorrectly when media guides are printed...which means they will be said incorrectly by an announcer or reporter. I've seen mistakes if you don't believe me. A rising junior on the lacrosse team is listed as being born in 1980. I'm pretty sure that's not true.