There is always one player on every team who is the face of all of the glory, but also of all the pressure.
Every team has them, whether it is said out loud or quietly understood. The one who gets the ball when the game tightens. The one whose name is mentioned first in previews, in post-game recaps and in conversations that stretch beyond the locker room. The one who carries not just their own expectations, but everyone else’s too.
In sport, being “the one” is usually considered an honour. It is recognition, validation and proof that something about your ability sets you apart. It is what athletes are taught to chase from the beginning, long before university, long before varsity, long before anyone is writing about them. But what rarely gets written about is the weight of the role for the few who are in it, once the attention becomes constant and the expectations stop being aspirational and start being assumed.
Being “the one” is never just about talent; it is about pressure.
It is the kind of pressure that does not always show itself in obvious ways. It does not always look like stress or panic or visible frustration. Sometimes it looks like consistency, composure or control. It looks like showing up and delivering, again and again, until people stop noticing that it is difficult at all. The more reliable an athlete becomes, the more invisible the weight becomes too.
There is a particular kind of silence that surrounds athletes who are seen as central to a team’s success. Teammates rely on them. Coaches build systems around them. Opponents plan for them. Audiences expect something from them every time they step into a game. And in the middle of all of that, there is very little space to falter without consequence.
Because when you are “the one,” mistakes are not just mistakes. They are disruptions. They shift momentum, alter perception and invite scrutiny. A missed shot, a bad pass, a quiet game — these moments carry more meaning than they would for anyone else. They are analyzed, replayed and discussed, not always publicly, but always somewhere.
And still, the narrative persists that this is what athletes want. This is the goal: to be the one everything runs through.
For some, that is true. There is a pride that comes with responsibility and a sense of purpose in knowing your presence matters in a tangible way. There is something deeply human about wanting to be needed. But the problem is not the role itself. It is the assumption that the role is singular, that it belongs to one type of athlete, one kind of story.
Because the reality is more complicated than that.
Every athlete arrives at their sport with something of their own: a different background, a different set of circumstances or a different relationship to the game itself. For some, sport has always been about opportunity. For others, it has been about escape. For many, it has been both at the same time. And those experiences do not disappear at the varsity level. They follow them, shaping how they understand pressure, success and failure.
The athlete who is expected to lead may also be carrying expectations from home. The athlete who is praised for their consistency may also be navigating uncertainty outside of sport. The athlete who is celebrated publicly may still feel unseen in other ways. These layers do not cancel each other out. They exist together, often unnoticed.
This is where the idea of “the one” begins to shift.
Because if pressure is the defining feature of that role, then it is not limited to a single person. It does not belong exclusively to the highest scorer, the most visible player, the one whose name appears in headlines. Pressure exists in different forms across every roster.
It exists in the athlete fighting for playing time, knowing that one mistake could mean fewer opportunities. It exists in the injured player trying to return, balancing recovery with the fear of falling behind. It exists in the first-year athlete adjusting to a new level of competition, trying to prove they belong. It exists in the senior who knows every game is one of the last.
These pressures are quieter and less visible, but they are no less real.
And for athletes who come from marginalized or underrepresented backgrounds, that pressure often expands even further. It is not just about performance. It is about representation. About navigating spaces that were not always built with them in mind. About carrying expectations that extend beyond the team, beyond the sport itself.
In those moments, being “the one” takes on a different meaning.
It is not about being the focal point of a game. It is about existing in a space that does not always make room for you, and still finding a way to compete, contribute and belong. It is about being visible in environments where visibility can feel both empowering and isolating at the same time.
This is not something that is always acknowledged in traditional sports coverage. The stories that get told tend to follow familiar structures. Wins and losses. Standout performances. Records and milestones. These things matter, but they do not capture the full picture of what it means to participate in sport at this level.
They do not capture the internal negotiations athletes make every day. The decisions about when to push and when to hold back. The conversations they have with themselves about identity, purpose and about what comes next. The ways they reconcile who they are on the field with who they are off it.
Over time, it becomes clear that the role of “the one” is not fixed. It moves. It shifts from game to game, season to season, athlete to athlete. Sometimes it is visible. Sometimes it is not. But it is always present in some form.
And maybe that is the point.
Maybe the idea that there is only one person carrying pressure, only one person who matters most in a given moment, is more of a narrative convenience than a reality. It simplifies something that is inherently complex. It creates a clear storyline, an easy way to understand competition. But it also overlooks the collective nature of sport, the way responsibility is shared even when it is not evenly distributed.
As someone who has spent time writing about sport, covering games, speaking to athletes, and trying to capture what happens within and around competition, this becomes harder to ignore over time. The more stories you hear, the more perspectives you encounter, and the more you realize that no single narrative can fully represent what sport means to the people who participate in it.
There is always more beneath the surface.
There are conversations that do not make it into articles. Moments that happen away from cameras and crowds. Realizations that occur long after a game ends. These are the spaces where athletes often understand themselves most clearly, where the noise of expectation quiets just enough to hear something else.
And in those spaces, the definition of “the one” changes again.
It is no longer about being the best, or the most visible, or the most relied upon; it becomes about ownership. It is about recognizing that each athlete has something that is uniquely theirs, something that cannot be replicated or replaced: their path, their perspective and their relationship to the sport.
That does not mean every athlete receives the same opportunities, or the same recognition, or the same level of support. Those inequalities exist, and they matter. But within those constraints, within those realities, there is still individuality. There is still agency.
Every athlete is navigating their own version of pressure, shaped by their circumstances, their goals and their experiences. Every athlete is making choices about how to respond to that pressure, how to define success or how to move forward when things do not go as planned.
In that sense, every athlete is “the one.”
Not in the way that sport typically defines it, not as the singular figure at the centre of attention, but as the central figure in their own story. The one who has to live with the outcomes, who must process the wins and losses, who has to decide what it all means in the end.
This is not a neat conclusion. It does not resolve the tensions that exist within sport or eliminate the pressures that come with competition. Those things remain. They are part of what makes sport compelling, part of what draws people to it in the first place.
But it does offer a different way of looking at it.
A way that moves away from singular narratives and toward something more collective, more nuanced. A way that acknowledges that while some athletes are positioned as central, the experience of pressure is far more widespread than that.
As this chapter of writing comes to an end for me, as the time spent covering these stories reaches its own conclusion, this feels like the takeaway that matters most.
Not the scores, or the standings, or even the standout performances, as important as they are. But the recognition that behind every game, every roster, every moment of competition, there are individuals carrying something of their own. Something that shapes how they move through sport, how they understand themselves within it.
And that no matter how the roles are assigned, no matter who is labelled as the one in any given moment, that label never fully captures what is actually happening.
Because the truth is quieter than that, and broader.
Every athlete steps into their sport with something at stake. Every athlete feels pressure in a way that is specific to them. Every athlete is, in some form, navigating what it means to be seen, to be relied upon, to be part of something larger while still holding onto something personal.
Every athlete is the one.