Winning and losing

Yesterday I commented about wanting to create a world where everyone wins, where win-win situations are the norm. I mentioned this to my close friend who is a former Teacher of the Year here in New Hampshire, and she brought up our country's emphasis, bordering on obsession, with sports. Of course, sport is a subject that is near and dear to my heart. I follow pro sports, and college sports to a lesser degree; I have participated in sports all my life, and while I am not a great athlete, I enjoy playing and I try hard. The best compliment I ever received from a coach was that he wished he had 11 players on the pitch giving my effort. So, I love it, whether I win, lose, or draw (not that I don't care about the result). Any activity that involves chasing a ball around a field, I'm interested in at least finding out what's going on.

However, my teacher friend's point is that our culture values winning at all costs--the team losing the game is considered less valuable or inferior, and they are deemed to not have worked hard enough, when that may not be the case at all. Take it from me, it's frustrating to work hard on your game and still not have it come out the way I want it. I can work, work, work on my golf game and still when I get out on the course, I'm going to slice it into the woods. But I'm going to keep after it, no matter what.

The sad part about the over-emphasis on victory is that it makes people likely to quit. One time I did quit. In elementary school in Massachusetts I played football (soccer) for a while, but they always put me in goal, where it seemed to me that there was less to do, or I was less important, so I quit playing. Later on in my senior year in high school, I was watching our team practice and I thought, hey I'd like to try that--football is indeed the Beautiful Game. And what do you know, I became a goalkeeper, and while I was late coming to the game, I even played in college and for several years in an adult summer league after that. While I was never what I would consider "good," I went on to become a volunteer assistant coach at my high school, having learned enough to show young players the fundamentals.

I often think, what would have happened if I hadn't quit at that early age? Maybe I could have played NCAA Division 1, or even professionally. But even though I didn't accomplish those things, still I have to count myself a winner because I participated, while so many people are content to sit on the couch and watch TV. Because I played, I had so many experiences and developed so many friendships that I otherwise would not have, without which my life would be poorer.