Dressing Rooms

“What’s said and done in the dressing room – stays in the dressing room”. My husband Dave often repeated that phrase to me when I asked him what he and his teammates talked about in the dressing room before a hockey game or basketball game. Not being an athlete myself I don’t know much about the private mystique of the dressing room. I would have dearly loved to have been a ‘fly on the wall’ in the dressing room of the Steinbach Puckers hockey team my husband played on for nearly a decade or his Steinbach basketball team which traveled to the city for many years to play in the Winnipeg Mens’ League.

       I finally had a chance to visit a sports dressing room in Bowral, Australia at the Cricket Hall of Fame. My husband Dave has become rather enamored with the game of cricket after watching it played professionally in Hong Kong and having to teach the sport to his physical education students. During our Christmas holiday trip to Australia the Aussies and Pakistan were playing an historic and closely fought five day match and it wasn’t always easy to get Dave away from the television coverage to do a little sight seeing.  When he told me he wanted to visit the Cricket Hall of Fame I admit I wasn’t that excited. I had however once accompanied him to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York and found it much more interesting than I’d expected so I was willing to give the Cricket Hall of Fame a shot. 

    The highlight of my visit was the opportunity to see a replica of a dressing room and listen to recordings of players talk about their dressing room experience. Here were some athletes willing to break the traditional code of privacy and let us know what actually goes on in a dressing room. I took out my notebook to record their thoughts.

     “The dressing room is a place of male bonding”, said one player. “It’s where team mates share their love of the game. The camaraderie of the dressing room is the thing I love the most about cricket.”

“The dressing room is where you do your mental preparation for the game and where you process what happened after the game.”

“Some guys pray in the dressing room.”

“The dressing room is where younger players learn from older more experienced players by listening to stories of their past exploits.”

“It’s a great place to observe human behavior. Some players are very emotional about the game, nearly in tears and others are nervous and anxious to the point of being physically sick. Some are subdued and quiet. There are players who are so superstitious they must always sit at the same spot in the dressing room, take their gear out of their bag in the same order and get dressed in exactly the same way.”

“For some athletes the dressing room is a place to party and have fun.” One of the players tells stories of card games in the dressing room and the many practical jokes that his teammates played on one another there. 

“It’s a place of sanctuary and escape, away from family, fans and the spotlight.”

“It’s the best place a guy could ever want to be.”

I’m glad that my recent visit to The Cricket Hall of Fame cleared up a little of the mystery of what goes on in a sports dressing room. It seems that not everything that happens in the dressing room stays in the dressing room.