Losing the big game provides life lessons, long-term benefits

I see it every year and as the fall sports season wrapped up this last week, I saw it again. The image of athletes sitting on the ground, emotionally crushed after a season ending defeat. It’s different than a game with nothing at stake, but a game that decided who would continue to play and who would go home. Tears streaming down their face, you’ll find that even the toughest of kids will shed them. Teammates embracing each other as some may have just played their final game. They won’t leave the playing field until forced to as they try to hold on as long as they can to something they’ve put their entire soul into. I’ve witnessed it many times and even been a part of it myself a time or two. Once you get past the thought of a different result, you begin to think of what the experience means to the players. With an entire life in front of them, the process of dedicating yourself to something bigger than an individual, putting in the effort to excel towards success, and making the sacrifices needed to reach a goal will benefit them in the long run.

Although ending the season on a losing note is something no athlete wants to do, for those with their sights set on state titles, it can only become a reality for one team each year. While an outsider may observe an athlete’s tears as weakness, they’ve sorely mistaken what are really tears of strength. Not strength in what is the current moment, but the strength they’ll take with them into the rest of their lives. While they hear it from their coaches and they repeat it in clichés themselves, the lessons athletes learn from competing aren’t fully self-recognized immediately, if ever. They’re taken unknowingly away from the playing field into many of the situations adults find themselves in everyday whether it is at work, with your family, or in the community. Passion, teamwork, responsibility, etc. All are hopefully applied in some form or another.

Watching high school sports isn’t just the observation of X’s and O’s being strategically played out, but also the development of young people before your very eyes. One of the things I enjoy most about my job isn’t watching someone score a long touchdown, sink a three-pointer, or hit a homerun, but observe how the athletes handle themselves afterwards. As true in sports and life, the way people handle success and failure is a part of what defines someone’s character and that is what is built in high school athletics. Even though those grim moments after failure have set in are painful and hard to face, you hope it’s something positive they take away from it, because it won’t be the last time they’ll have to face not achieving their goals, but the experience will push them to reach for new ones.

As a fan and observer, those moments are sometimes uncomfortable to be around, but in the end I’d rather watch a team that had something to play for struggle to comprehend a season ending loss than to watch them walk off the field as if it never mattered at all.