The PyeongChang Olympics were all about people and positivity

How do you sum up the experience of a lifetime? For our team in PyeongChang, it was a three-letter acronym: PMA.

Positive mental attitude was our linguistic spirit animal in South Korea, where we were covering our first Olympics for Yahoo Canada Sports. I’m not sure who coined the term, but me and my friends have been using it for years dating back to high school when you needed a case of the PMAs to get you through the day-after a case of beers … if you know what I mean.

Anyway, PMA has been something of a team motto for the YCS crew but it took on a life of its own at the Olympics, where 21 days of getting lost and no sleep can certainly take its toll on the mind.

It was that promise of positivity that got myself, Amit Mann, and Mackenzie Liddell through those 19-hour days — and isn’t that what the Olympics are all about anyway? Smiling in the face of adversity, finding wins against the backdrop of losses.

We learned a lot about PMA from the Olympians, like Max Parrot who laughed off his busted up chin and podium-less finish at big air because he was glad he went for gold with a complex trick, even though an easier jump would have likely landed him a medal.

Patrick Chan told us he was ready to quit just three months before the Olympics but instead chose to return so he could go out on his terms — even if that didn’t include a medal in the singles event. No big deal, Chan said. He’s at peace with his career.

Mark McMorris said he was lucky just to be here. Tessa and Scott made anyone who crossed their paths feel like the most important people at the Games. The South Korean hockey players told us how special it was to play on a unified Korean team with the North, despite all the other reasons not to like it.

Just like these Olympians, our PyeongChang experience was about more than just sports. It was about people and positivity.

It was about the volunteers who worked nocturnal hours and went out of their way to prioritize our needs.

It was about the HuffPost Korea team who traveled three hours from Seoul to collaborate with a Canadian sports team they had never met. We ended up working on a half dozen videos with them during our relatively short stay there, took a crazy long day trip to Seoul to meet the rest of their squad and team up on more projects, and learned that despite language barriers, both crews were very much in sync.

So, yeah, we could have tweeted about the food we didn’t like, the cabs we couldn’t hail, and the athletes we couldn’t get, but where’s the PMA in that? We all missed our families, friends, and teammates in Canada, but focusing on the silver lining of every roadblock became this infectious rally cry that motivated us to relentlessly push forward.

It was our first Olympics, period, but we didn’t follow any traditional playbook. We worked out of the trenches (literally on some shoots), embedded with fans for a more authentic experience, hung out with athletes, and embraced spontaneity. You would have been hard pressed to find us in a press box because we had too many places to be.

McMorris told us that snowboarders always prefer the experience over the results and that may be the best way to sum up our trip. We put together a little video showing you what we mean. Hope you enjoy.

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