Learn How To Lose

I was inspired by Terry's post, passing on his knowlege and experience that he's gained as an athlete and a coach and some of the key messages that he has been preaching to the kids. I have been coaching an elementary wrestling program over the winter and have been reminded of what we learn from sports, how to talk to different levels of athletes and what we can take away from sports, win or lose. I thought that I'd also take a moment to share some thoughts, but also to give our friend Kyle some retribution, as I think that Kyle is a good example of how to keep fighting and never give up. I've truly enjoyed my coaching experience this winter and coaching with Jamie Carayiannis, a veteran coach of Annandale High School, has been preaching many of the messages that I'll discuss on this post for years.

The topic here is failure and what we learn from it. In the sport of elementary wrestling, many of the lessons are about how to react to losing. Imagine that you're in first grade ... you step out onto a wrestling mat and some other kid is looking into your eyes like he wants to rip your head off with his parents standing behind him reinforcing what is clearly going thru his mind, screaming at the top of their lungs. Then you get pummeled, feel humiliated in front of your friends and family, go to the center of the mat, the ref raises the other kids hand ... and to do that week after week is not easy. One of the challenging thing about coaching these kids is to keep them from quitting.

Success or Failure at a particular event is just a snapshot of an athlete a particular moment in time. Kids mature physically at different ages. Some kids are great in elementary school, and fade away later. Other kids don't mature until high school or even later. Some kids are in the middle of a growth spurt with lanky limbs and haven't grown into themselves just yet. As a kid in a sport, it's difficult to take these things into consideration, because they don't always view themselves on a journey, mostly it's all about the one match that they just wrestled and have been preparing for, but we have to remind them that it's not just about winning or losing, but more about the journey and what they can learn about the match, take away and come back next time better prepared.

When I wrestled in college, there was a kid on the team named "Goldy". He wrestled all 4 years of college, went thru hell with the rest of us...every practice, every weight training session, but NEVER won a match. Goldy was looked up to by everyone on the team with some sort of god-like status, because what kind of person could put themself thru that sort of torture repeatedly, only to never reap the rewards of victory? Well, Goldy did. That made him pretty special and well respected. I remember one tournament match in particular at Cornell University, when Goldy was up in the 3rd period and the news quickly spread across the floor and before you knew it, every teammate was crowded around the mat cheering on Goldy as it seemed that he would pull this one out and we could all celebrate victoriously. Alas, something happened like it always did and Goldy ended up losing somehow. Goldy just didn't know how to win. But the one thing that Goldy had more of than anyone else was perseverence. Granted, Goldy didn't possess the losing skills that enabled him to learn from his loss and turn those weaknesses into strengths, but he did possess the admirable quality of perseverence. Sometimes, we just need to pick ourselves up and keep going. Don't give up.

My personal experience is that I'd wrestled since second grade and after 10 years, I finally made varsity at the High School level only to lose in the sectional tournament at 132 lbs. But, I didn't give up and 2 years later I was the ECC champ at 190 lbs as a walk on student at Bucknell. Later, I repeated that 3 times and became an all american.

How we react to losing is much more important than anything else. This is espescially relevant in cycling. A hundred riders line up and only one rider wins the race. Everyone else loses. 2nd place is first loser. So, what to do? Well, we don't hang up our cleats and give up, right? We rethink our training plan, think about the implications of weight, time on the bike, training intensity, time of the year, our diet, etc, etc, etc. Geez, even if we don't end up getting across the finish line first next time around, look at all of the side benefits that we get from focussing our brains on how to get across the finish line in terms of general fitness. That benefit alone is worth pinning a number on and lining up at the race.