I was looking through some older movies online and stumbled upon ‘Miracle’. It’s the movie that tells the story of Herb Brooks, an American ice hockey player who became the coach who led the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team to victory over the seemingly invincible Russian (Soviet Union) hockey team. When Brooks was recruited, the US Ice Hockey committee members were most interested in not being embarrassed at the upcoming Olympics. Coach Brooks takes it up a notch and sets his goals clearly: he wants to beat Russia and take the gold medal. “That’s a pretty lofty goal Herb,” a committee member tells him. “Well that’s why I want to pursue it” Herb responds.
Coach Brooks hand picked his team and what a team he picked. He picked several of his Minnesota players as well as several from their rival, Boston University. To compete in the same arena with the Russian hockey team, coach Brooks put a big emphasis on teamwork and creativity, a difficult thing to do with a two college teams that were bitter rivals. He also focused on peak conditioning, because one of the reasons he thought the Russian hockey team had dominated international competition was that many of their opponents were exhausted by the third period.
