told ESPN. So Ricki, Ricki plays, but Ricki doesnt grind a ton. But before t

The recent womens Olympic marathon trials finish in Los Angeles was both frustrating and inspiring for me. The event was nationally broadcast live for the first time, so we could witness the front of the pack gutting out the last four miles -- including Amy Cragg desperately pulling along her fading friend and teammate, Shalane Flanagan, grabbing water for her, slowing her own pace and encouraging Flanagan with words we couldnt hear. Even after shed left Flanagan, Cragg continued looking back to encourage her. Like many watching, I was inspired by Craggs selflessness and sportsmanship.Cragg won the race and Flanagan finished third, ensuring both will compete in the 2016 Rio Games. The finish-line shot of Cragg catching Flanagan in her arms as her legs collapsed brought tears to my eyes as I remembered how many women have helped me through races and workouts and how many have caught me at the finish line. But I also couldnt help wondering, Would a man work so hard to pull along a teammate?I could hear my fathers frustrated voice in my head, speaking to me after a high school cross country race in which Id admitted to feeling guilty for beating a friend. Why?! hed exclaimed, baffled. Dont wait. Its your race. Dont think twice next time. Just pass her.Athletic marketers might argue women-only races have increased in popularity because they offer an empowering environment. But I think competing against women can create more stress -- especially when youre competing against women you consider friends. Ive found through both racing and coaching others that women feel (or are made to feel) guilty after leaving a female friend behind in a race. On multiple occasions Ive stood with friends on starting lines negotiating whether or not to run separately.For years as a running and triathlon coach, competitive athlete and linguist, I have struggled with a perceived conflict over how competitive drive and female friendship can safely coexist. I was struck when a friend and former Division I runner recalled her college coach saying to her, Some days I think all I have to do is to get you girls to hate each other and then youll run faster. While, sadly, this may be half true, surely there are healthier ways to develop a successful team. That, combined with my feelings about the marathon trials, made me want to better understand the dynamics of female friends in competition.My friend, my competitorWomen are taught from a young age to help, cooperate with and be empathetic of others. When I was 4 years old, I learned that being bossy was wrong. Then, 10 years later, I was expected to be a boss on the field, taking control and beating my female friends on the track. Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, in her keynote speech at the 2006 WNBA Celebrating Inspiration event, said, There is a special place in hell for women who dont help other women. But how do you help someone if you are trying to beat her?I think women have to be confident in their own?failures and?successes in order for friendships to exist outside of?competition, says Erica Allar, 30, a pro cyclist from North Carolina. They have to understand that failures and successes in?competition do not define individuals as a person or define a friendship.I didnt understand this as a high school runner. Whether my friends liked me or not heavily influenced my performance -- not the reverse. On more than one occasion I hesitated passing a teammate in a race, fearful that girl might hold it against me, which would create a rift in our friendship at school.When I began running cross country my freshman year, I consistently ran with one sophomore girl during the 5k and then outkicked her at the end of each race. During one race, sensing my desire to pick up the pace, she instructed me, Not yet, Amanda. Dont go yet. I hesitated for a moment, then I heard my fathers voice insisting, What are you waiting for?! I ran ahead. Later, I heard shed passed out on the course and had to be driven by ambulance to the hospital. I felt horribly guilty. Over the next two years competing with her, I never beat her again. And I never tried.Fearing this response to competition could seep into other areas of my life, my father sent me to a sports psychologist. He helped me address the negative self-talk that was destroying me before I toed the line.When I began coaching cross country and track at DePauw University, my father gave me a book hed read when I was in high school, Games Girls Play: Understanding Young Female Athletes in Competition. The book describes a study of 115 professional tennis players, in which females were reported to be more affected than males by self-confidence and fan behavior.Road and mountain runner Melody Fairchild, a two-time Olympic trials qualifier and eight-time national champion, sees that in the performance of young women on the high school cross country teams and camps she coaches.Their identity is so tightly wrapped up in how others see them that they let that get in the way of performing their best, says Fairchild, 42, who was the first high school girl in the U.S. to break 10 minutes for two miles. My running was a pure expression of living with heart. And Im still wildly curious to figure out that magic key to help these young, altruistic women find a way to feel comfortable giving the best of themselves.A delicate balanceThe difficulty in balancing friendship and performance is something Sara Kadlec, 31, can attest to in her own training. If I feel better than expected at a workout I had planned to do with a friend, I wouldnt think of leaving her or running ahead. Id stay within the controlled pace we had planned to run. But when Ive discussed this with men, they think this is absolutely absurd. Its a workout, theyll say, youre supposed to go hard.Holding back is not something one would associate with Kadlec:?Shes a new mother, physicians assistant in neurosurgery, national podium-placing ski mountaineer and sub-three-hour marathoner. And yet, its something she might do in a workout to preserve harmony with a friend.When developing intimacy and maintaining a level playing field are traits young girls learn early, how do adult women separate competition from friendship? For me, it was about learning how to separate myself as a competitor from myself as a friend -- a skill that took me years to master.I wish at 15 years old I could have compartmentalized my relationships with competitors like pro mountain biker and college professor Becky Edmiston, who says in a race she encounters three groups of people: Women I dont know and I want to beat, women I know (whose friendship I value) and I want to beat, and women that rub me the wrong way and I want to beat.Edmiston says she trains with and encourages her friends. If I find myself passing a friend I might tell them to come with me. But Im not waiting around for them.Pam Landry, a sports psychologist and coach at The Athletes Edge in New Haven, Connecticut, finds herself working with many female athletes who struggle to balance friendship and competition. She says complications can arise when feeling guilty is associated with caring -- an association many women have been taught to make. The underlying implication behind this logic is that in order to be a good person or friend, Landry says, you must show you care by feeling guilty and then prove it by conforming to the perceived needs of those around you.Landry asks her athletes to rewrite the script in their head by asking themselves, What am I afraid of when I run faster or improve more than my friends? Disapproval from others or myself? Fear of failure or success?Another way to remain objective during competition is to tell yourself, No judgment, just execution. Landry says. Once this cue becomes an automatic pre-competitive response it helps the athlete to avoid letting feelings of friendship for their fellow competitors override their competitive drive.The goal is to teach the athlete that being the better performer does not make you the lesser person. It simply means that youre actively pursuing excellence.What Ive learnedCommunicating your goals before a race can help maintain a friendship, says coach and researcher Joanna Zeiger, who finished fourth in the triathlon at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. I ran the 2013 L.A. Marathon with [close friend and training partner] Colleen De Reuck. At Mile 17, I knew I was fading. Rather than let her wonder if she should wait or go, I told her I was struggling and that I would see her at the finish line.Ive adopted that policy of communication in my own friendships with fellow athletes as Ive grown. Recently, at the start of a long run with a group of friends, a very talented and competitive woman in her 30s said, Im feeling slow today. Dont wait up for me. I could tell she wasnt feeling 100 percent, but her silent treatment when she returned from the run, after trailing us the whole way, made it clear she had expected us to, indeed, wait up for her. I didnt feel guilty this time. I reminded her of what shed said and she accepted some responsibility. After eight years of training together, this was an overdue step in the right direction for our friendship and success as athletes.Healthy friendships and competition can coexist in the presence of confidence, honesty and direct communication. These are the traits that made for such a compelling finish to the marathon trials, and theyre what will make me root for Shalane Flanagan and Amy Cragg even harder at the Rio Olympics.Amanda McCracken is a Boulder-based writer, runner, and coach. 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Mitch Holmberg added a goal and three assists. Connor Chartier also scored for the Chiefs (3-0-0). Luke Harrison spoiled Garrett Hughsons shutout bid with a power-play goal at 13:17 of the third period. The Spokane goaltender finished with 28 saves, including a Brandon Fushimi penalty shot in the second period that would have tied the game 1-1. Now that the dust has settled in Anaheim, California after the Capcom Cup and the Street Fighter scene shifts into the offseason, a few questions still linger in the air. Du NuckleDu Dang may have won the Cup, but as we await Season 2 of the competitive circuit and prepare to grind matches on the new patch, we wonder: who is truly the top dog in SFV?Coming into the championship , there were certainly favorites, top seeds and tournament winners expected to perform well. Hajime Tokido Taniguchi, Seonwoo Infiltration Lee, Justin Wong, Yusuke Momochi -- four players who looked set to climb the brackets, but all fell short of the prize. Three of them didnt even win a game en route to elimination. Meanwhile, the grand finals featured relative surprises in Ricki Ortiz and Du, who, despite positive on-site analysis were less favored than the titans of Street Fighter.Many speculated about how the top players could have dropped so fast, citing challenges with staying consistent in Street Fighter V. One of the Cups competitors, Ryan FChamp Ramirez, sees it more as a growing level of competition.The event had 32 world class player;, anyone can lose to any player, Ramirez told ESPN. Its the World Finals. Going 0-2 on Capcom Cup is not the same as going 0-2 in pools.With a growing level of competition, its not so much the raw talent, but ability to handle matchups. When 32 of the best players in the world assemble, it sometimes isnt enough to just be good at your character of choice, but good against others mains. Kenneth KBrad Bradley pointed to Evil Geniuses teammate Justin Wongs elimination as illustration of this.[For] Justin, its all about who you draw first round, said Bradley. Justin always loses to Chun-Li. It does not matter what Chun-Li it is, Justin will lose to Chun-Li. There is not a question. So Justin went 0-2 the last two years of Capcom Cup, then he got Chun-Li first. So its like, now hes freaking out, its all in his head, then he lost to Chun-Li right away.Tokido, a top player who took second at both Final Round and the NorCal Regionals, ran into trouble against DR Ray, whose main training partner is Caba, a top-tier Ryu player who plays a similar style to Tokido. Looking at Infiltration, the Evo champion, commentator David Ultradavid Philip Graham believed it might be an issue of visibility that brought down the champ.Infiltration dominated the first few months of Street Fighter V, but hasnt looked nearly that strong since the summer, Graham told ESPN. I think he figured out how to play SFV well earlier than anyone else, but the rest of the top players caught up, the overall strategy shifted, and he didnt keep up. It seemed like he was trying to change by picking new characters in recent events, but I guess that didnt work well enough.Even for players like Momochi, some of the most dangerous players were lurking in the lower bracket. Hiroyuki Eita Nagata can fly under the radar sometimes, but hes a Ken player who placed in the top 8 at Evo, beating Tokido to earn that spot. So wwhen Momochi met Eita in the lower bracket, it was dire straits for the EG player.ddddddddddddMomochi losing, he was one of the favorites to win the tournament, but he had to fight Eita, said Bradley. So he fights Eita, and Eitas a crazy style of Ken [while] Momochis a very slow-paced, calculated fighter ... Those are the people theyre going to lose to, so it all depends on who you have to fight in the Capcom Cup.Even in spite of the high-profile upsets in the first rounds of Capcom Cup, the level of competition at the tournament was some of the highest yet for the fledgling game, released earlier this year.Of the top 8 at Capcom Cup, the first four made top 8 at Evo, said Graham. Fourth place was considered the best player in Japan for quite a while, third place was last years Capcom Cup champion, second place is one of the best U.S. players ever, and the overall winner has pretty clearly been the best player on Earth the past couple months. Its hard to be consistent in any game, but I dont think SFV is worse for that than most. Instead, its more that games tend to be volatile early in their lives before people have figured things out. That was the case for SF4, Marvel vs Capcom 3, [and others].Ramirez echoed those sentiments, pointing to Street Fighter Vs relative youth in the fighting game scene.The game has only been out for 10 months, said Ramirez. Most situations and nuances are not fully optimized yet. I expect more consistent results from top players next season.In Street Fighter V, more than ever, its about who shows up to win. Ricki Ortiz tweeted about her practice leading up to the event, and Du dealt with significant trials and tribulations early in the year, according to Graham. Both persevered and found their way to the main stage, a single series from the prize.I think its all about who wants it more, Bradley told ESPN. So Ricki, Ricki plays, but Ricki doesnt grind a ton. But before this tournament, Ricki was grinding a lot, Ricki was playing every single day. I went over to the house and we played Cammy vs. Chun-Li a lot.Both players practiced really hard, said Ramirez. [In the] two weeks before Capcom Cup they easily clocked in 120 hours each. They beat so many good players along the way, [and] I am so proud of them.As the scene grows and the game along with it, the top players will continue to be challenged by more newcomers, attracted by the Capcom Pro Tour circuit and the growing number of Street Fighter tournaments. For Graham, its not about old guard versus new guard, but a matter of understanding the game, gaining confidence and showing up.There will always be shifts, of course, said Graham. No well-made game remains static, either in its strategies or its successful players. As SFV develops and the players come to understand it better, it will settle down a bit. But as above, I dont think its any more upset-heavy than other games. ' ' '