By Bill Phillips

It was a cloudy day in July.

Two down top of the seventh inning, we were up a run or two and I was playing right field. A lazy fly ball was hit my way and I had positioned myself well enough that I only had to take a few steps to get underneath it. The ball hit my glove dead-centre and popped right back out again.

I had dropped the ball.

The other team scored a couple of runs on the play, rallied for a couple more in the inning, and knocked us out of the tournament.

It’s been more than 30 years since I missed that flyball and yet I can remember it like it was yesterday.

For anyone who thinks soccer star Lauren Sesselmann won’t remember her slip and fall in the Canada’s quarterfinal loss last week, think again. The fall led to England’s first goal as they went on to defeat Canada 2-1 and bounce the Canucks out of the FIFA World Cup.

If my gaffe 30 years ago in a 16-team slowpitch tournament with a $1,000 purse on the line was enough to leave an impact, I suspect Sesselmann’s slip will haunt her as well. Just a wee bit more on the line.

And, I suspect no one will be harder on Sesselmann for that slip than Sesselman herself.

That’s why it’s really disheartening to see those on the ‘Haternet’ come out and rip her to shreds for it.

She slipped and fell. Get over it. In sports, at all levels, it happens.

Overtime, Game 7 of the 1994 Stanley Cup finals, Vancouver captain Trevor Linden rings the puck off the goalpost. Still hailed as a hero 20 years later. Shouldn’t we be vilifying him for missing an open net?

Yes, it’s ridiculous. So is chastizing Lauren Sesselmann for tripping and falling.

Rather than Sesselmann’s fall, what we should be talking about happened only moments after the game.

For those of us watching on television, the cameras zoomed in on Christine Sinclair, arguably one the best Canadian athletes of all time. She was down on her hands and knees, her face buried in her hands. Her heart obviously broken into a million pieces.

Then, just moments later, she was up, getting the Canadian team together in a huddle. Although the cameras couldn’t pick up what she was saying, it was obvious she was giving the speech of her life. She was, undoubtedly, making sure her teammates didn’t wallow too long in the despair of defeat. She was picking up the pieces and putting them back together stronger than they were before.

She was being a leader.

If you can’t see the beauty and majesty in that, don’t even watch the game and restrict your online comments to who just got kicked out of the Big Brother house.

Bill Phillips is a freelance columnist living in Prince George. He was the winner of the 2009 Best Editorial award at the British Columbia/Yukon Community Newspaper Association’s Ma Murray awards, in 2007 he won the association’s Best Columnist award. In 2004, he placed third in the Canadian Community Newspaper best columnist category and, in 2003, placed second. He can be reached at billphillips1@mac.com