When the Other Team Isn’t Playing Clean

The team you’re playing has a reputation.

Physical. Chippy. They play at the edge. Some of what they do is legal and some of it is borderline. They use physical play to get in your head. They talk. They provoke. And if you let them, they’ll turn your response to their tactics into the story of the game.

Your response to what they bring is the only thing in this you can control.

Read this passage slowly.

Let that sit for a second before you move.

Overcome evil with good. Paul is not describing passivity. He’s describing a specific kind of strength — the refusal to let someone else’s behavior set the standard for your own. The opponent who plays dirty doesn’t get to bring you down to their level unless you let them.

When an opponent is playing physically or provocatively, there are two failure modes. The first: you get drawn into their game. You respond to the provocation, you escalate, you lose focus on competing and start managing the situation. That’s exactly what they want. They’ve turned a game about skill into a game about emotional control, and they’ve bet that they have more of it than you do.

The second failure mode is subtler: you go passive. You protect yourself from the physical play by pulling back from full competitive engagement. That’s also a win for them.

The correct response is neither. It’s playing your game, at full intensity, without lowering the standard. Competing physically where that’s appropriate and legal. Not rising to the provocation. Not retaliating. Using the energy of their tactics as fuel for your performance rather than a distraction from it.

The team that keeps its standard when the opponent drops theirs wins something that the final score doesn’t capture. And often wins the final score too.

Specific pre-commitment to a response. The more concrete the plan, the more likely it gets executed under pressure.