Note: I originally wrote this for a college application, but since said college rejected me, I have no qualms about posting this here – especially since it is hockey related and I’m pretty proud of it. This will also be the most-edited piece you will ever read here. Enjoy!

It was really just a game, a competition between two groups of individuals to see who could follow a set of arbitrary rules to the best of their ability and win. Generally, all sports are like that; meaningless in the grand scheme of things, their purpose to entertain. In this case, it was a hockey game, played between two teams that each represented a country. It also happened to be February 20, 1980, and the two countries involved were the United States and the Soviet Union.

On the surface, it was a hockey game between a team that had dominated the sport for the better part of two decades, and a team composed of players who had no recollection of a time that preceded the former team’s dominance. It was the equivalent of professional players matched against a ragtag bunch of college kids, with what was supposed to be a predictable result. Yet, the college kids upset the professionals, transforming an Olympic hockey game into a “Miracle on Ice.”

Pulling off what is widely considered to be the greatest upset in sports history was not enough to make the game so famous and memorable. It was in the context, when the game was viewed as just a small aspect of a much larger battle. The game became symbolic as a battlefield between capitalism and communism, between the two world powers. It was a way for one, the winner, to assert their dominance over the other on a world stage, where one country could point out and say, “My people are better than your people.” For the American people, it also became a ray of hope after the depressing, crisis-plagued 1970s. Yes, there were the two oil crises, the Iranian hostage crisis, the Soviets invading Afghanistan – but there was also a group of kids refusing to succumb to their supposed inferiority, and doing better than anyone thought they would. The little hockey team that could had reached the medal round against all expectations. A win against what was considered the evilest of empires would surely be a sign of better things to come. The win would give Americans hope and a reason to have pride in their country.

When the game is examined on a much deeper level, more facets emerge. No longer is the team thought of as a single organism, but as a unit composed of individuals. There was the story of Herb Brooks, the coach who was cut from the 1960 gold medal US hockey team just weeks before the Olympics, and who would do anything for a gold medal. Jim Craig was the goalie whose mother had died and father got fired. There was the geographic rivalry within the very core of the US team. On the other side were the expectations that were thrust upon the Soviet players, and their need to win to remain prominent and privileged in their society. Al Michaels was the commentator who strove for impartiality, only to disregard it in the final seconds of the game to deliver one of the most famous calls in sports history: “Do you believe in miracles? Yes!” All of these subplots factored into the game, making it more than just win or lose.

But then, going even further into the play of the hockey game itself, it becomes a simple numbers game filled with statistics. The object of the game was to put more pucks into your opponent’s net than they do in yours. The team that achieved that objective would win, the other team would lose. The game did not care about world politics nor the wants and needs of individual players. It was uncaring and impartial, awarding the win to the better, luckier team. It rewards crisp, clean passes and successful breakouts. It rewarded the goalie that controlled their rebounds – as Vladislav Tretiak found out, when he gave up a rebound that led to the United States’ tying goal. The game did not care that Tretiak was considered the best goalie in the world, or any preconceived reputation of the Soviet team. All it that mattered was the play and the actions taken by the players. Everything else faded away into the background, and the players became faceless parts of a whole once more.

The “Miracle on Ice” – the 1980 Winter Olympic upset of the Soviet men’s hockey team by the US – varies in complexity based on the depth of observation. It becomes more and more complex as it is examined further, taking into account everything that is in and around the game, but then it suddenly becomes simple when broken down to its very core – a hockey game. Everything else becomes just the atmosphere, the circumstances surrounding the game.