Miracle By Gavin O Connor: How Teamwork Makes The Dream Work

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As the saying goes, teamwork makes the dream work. When a group of individuals comes together to work seamlessly as a team, something pretty magical happens. People who work together are able to accomplish much more as a group than they would by themselves by building off each other.

An individual can be a strong player but when they’re apart of a team and are dedicated to the team’s success instead of to their own success they’re strengthened by the backup of that team. Getting a star studded group of individuals over a team of people can sometimes even spell for disaster. In the film Miracle by Gavin O’Connor, the coach, Herb Brooks played by Kurt Russell, builds the United States olympic hockey team of the 1980 games. Many people were …show more content…

But under Brooks’s training and with Brooks as a slight common enemy for the group, the boys who once were pitted against each other, become a strong, clean team and gain success. The mismatched group of kids went through their struggles early on in their process as they didn’t know how to work as a team, but after being broken down after their first game, a tie against the Norwegian national team, they started to think like a unit and began to run like a true team on the ice. An article by umbrella.org.nz explains perfectly how teamwork is important in success: “A strong team will provide an environment that fosters and supports individuals to enhance and maintain their resilience.” The best team is able to highlight the strengths of all their members instead of individuals carrying the rest of their team. If one works as a member of a team, both their triumph and lack of are supported. A group member who struggles or falters, will have an entire system behind them to help until their talent comes back and they gain the opportunity to …show more content…

In Miracle, after showing overwhelmingly impressive skill in the olympics, many reporters want to talk to young Jim Craig, the US goalkeeper, in the middle of matches. To maintain his team as that, a team, coach Brooks replies in a reporter to explain by simply saying, “This isn’t an individual effort. It’s about a team and we’re a team on the ice and we’re gonna be one off of it.” Brooks has got the idea completely right to preserve the team environment. If he allows some players to speak with press because of their highlights during games, they may succumb to ego and feel they deserve more, deserve better, and are better than their teammates which makes for a group atmosphere which will become toxic and unsuccessful. Keeping his group grounded is basically a Herb Brooks specialty. After the tie with the Norwegians, Brooks took the boys down quite a few notches pushing them to and right past all their breaking points. Upset with the team, distracted on the sidelines through most of the game and generally not putting their all out there, Herb has them lineup on the goalline and run suicides countless times, late into the night after even the rink manager has left for the night. Pushing the boys well into exhaustion, the punishment doesn’t end until Mike Eruzione, one of the players and the future captain of the team

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