As a varsity coach of both basketball and football, the coaching staff and I try to put as competitive a team on the court or field as possible. The objective of competing in sports is really simple: score more points than the other team. The goal is to win. However, I think something has been lost in translation in our culture. Winning and losing athletic contests doesn’t define an individual or a team.
During the football and basketball season, our coaches never talk about winning or losing. We talk about competing, using your talents to their potential, and giving your best in the arena of competition. A pep talk, however, is never prefaced with, “Okay guys, we have to get this win tonight.”
In reality, depending on the situation, a team could play a great game and lose, or it could play a terrible game and still win. Our culture of professional athletics and mefirst instant-gratification has warped everyone’s sense of success.
I recently heard one parent speak of his son’s youth sports experience. Theparent was upset that last season his son had a really bad experience. He happened to be on a sports team that didn’t win a game. So does winning determine our child’s experience? I happen to know that young man learned and improved tremendously during the sports season he participated in. Winning or losing does not define a person, team, or season.
My son played on a parent pitch team this season that won only two games. Does that make my son or his team “mediocre”? When the season was over, I was really proud of all the players on that team. Every one of those kids vastly improved throughout the season. I rarely, if ever, witnessed players who were upset after a game. In addition, the team consistently had almost every player show up every week.
I was very thankful that my boy learned a lot from his coaches, Rick and Cindi Crawford, who were very dedicated to the kids throughout the summer despite busy work schedules. What impressed me the most was the dedication of the parents who consistently showed up each week for games and practice. Our team was very fortunate to have a very dedicated group of parents. Is this not success? Is this not what we should celebrate as a community?
For those of you oldschool
types out there, I am not saying that winning and losing isn’t important. I am as competitive as anyone I know. If I am playing the board game “Chutes & Ladders” at home, trust me, I am playing to win. However, our child or our child’s sports team, are not defined by wins and losses. Theyare definedby the young people who participate in the sport. Theyare defined by the improvement in skills and by the manner in which they represented themselves as they participated. Theyare defined by the positive relationship that they create and foster throughout the season.
When I look back on past seasons of varsity football teams, I know which teams had more wins than others, but what I remember are the young men who competed together. I think of how they grew together and learned from one another. I don’t look back and define them according to their team’s success on the field.
One of my fondest coaching memories of all is coaching the varsity girls’ basketball team in the 1998-1999 season. It was my first year of coaching and our team by culture’s standards was not very good. We had a record of 7-16. However, I remember girls like Becca Jorgenson, Casey Gwash, Bethany May, Faith Draper, Abby Hudler, Malinda Berglund, Kelly Senty, and others all playing their hearts out.
Winning and losing sports events does reflect success and failure of a team’s performance. While we all want our kids to find success, make sure we chase after the right kind of success. Are my child’s skills improving? Is my child learning valuable life lessons? Is my child learning to work and serve others?
Try not to reinforce our culture’s warped sense of success. Winning games shouldn’t determine your child’s experience.
Mitch Dorr, a Cook County
High School Class of 1993
graduate, is now a social
studies teacher and coach at
his former alma mater. Mitch
coaches Vikings football and
boys’ basketball.
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