High fit

Brightness is about whether you see the hopeful or dark side of a situation. Romy Negrin's team finished ninth — one spot out of semifinals — and discovered they would have advanced if they'd played it safe. That's a brutal fact. But rather than letting that be the defining truth, Romy Negrin chose to read the same result as evidence that they were competitive enough to hang with the A bracket. She turned a near-miss into a baseline for what comes next.