Coaching Insight

Winning Isn’t Everything, But It’s A Lot

by  Michael Josephson

 If you want to raise the blood pressure and lose respect of people serious about sports, belittle their passion by telling them, “It’s just a game.”  Then smugly point out, “It’s not whether you win or loose that matters most.  It’s how you play the game.”

To those who devote substantial portions of their lives to sports as athletes, coaches or administrators, these clichés are naïve and offensive.  In the world they live in, winners are respected and highly paid while losers get eliminated or unemployed.  In fact, even youth coaches rate winning so highly that they think a child would rather sit on the bench of a winning team that play for a losing team.  Surveys show they are dead wrong!  Kids like to win, but it’s the adults who need to win.

 Winning isn’t everything, but it’s a lot.  It’s the grand reward for effort, the golden ring that motivates sacrifice and justifies hard work.  Yet too many adults overestimate the importance of victory and underestimate all the fun and learning that can take place in passionate pursuit of victory. 

I always wanted to win but as a high school basketball player who played three years for a mediocre C-Team I know that one can enjoy the game immensely and develop important life skills without winning.

 If we teach our children to love the process more than the result, to find pleasure in competition and play, not merely victory, we give them a lifetime of renewable pleasure.

 “Remember Character Counts!!!!”

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