Published May 30, 2022

This week's BOLD LAW ..."No pressure, No diamonds!''... Remember the 1980 Olympics? USA vs. USSR?

Written by The Kristan Cole Team Alaska

No pressure, No diamonds...

In Geology, you cannot have one without the other. They have to coexist with each other. Where else does this BOLD LAW show up?

In sports, pressure can be bad and good. At times, the right kind of pressure a coach puts on the athlete or a team can elevate them to a championship. A coach can see something in a team that they can't see themselves and the right pressure can build an unbreakable bond between the teammates.

A perfect example of this was Herb Brooks, the coach of the 1980 US Olympic hockey team. Coach Brooks was a master of psychology. Over the course of about seven months, he took a team of college players and with unrelenting, overbearing daily pressure, got them to hate him together.

These players had never played together and they would soon be taking on world-class teams of grown men. These international teams were much older, had world-class experience, and in some cases, had been a unit for ten years or more. Coach Brooks knew he had to be their coach and not their friend if they were to have the slightest chance to compete.

His daily pressure at practices and on road trips was legendary. The pressure that he placed on them created a bond amongst each other that led them to upset the heavily favored Soviet Union hockey team at the 1980 Olympics at Lake Placid, NY. It is still heralded as the greatest upset of all times in sports history.

To a man, those players now, thank Coach Brooks for that pressure he placed on them 42 years ago. They know that without that pressure, they would not have had the Gold medal placed around their necks. It's a great story. See the movie " Miracle " or read up on it.

It's a classic example of "No pressure...no diamonds!".

Contributed by KCN leader Don Aldrich