Winning And Losing

Above: M at the flag football championship game (click to see a bigger picture)

When I was a kid, I rarely played organized sports. The only one I can remember playing was basketball in fifth grade at Longfellow. I scored one basket during the season, which shows that if you throw the ball at the hoop enough times you’re bound to score. Our team won all of its games, due in large part to one student who was a year older than the other kids, taller, and much more athletic.

When I was in high school, I played a few springs in the church softball league. I’m not sure how much of an asset I was to the team but I remember hitting one home run because the guy in left field thought I wouldn’t be able to hit the ball very far. I showed him.

In the last year or so, M has been participating in some fairly competitive events – he’s played flag football twice, and the Science Olympiad for school. He’s also played soccer, which in some ways isn’t as competitive as flag football. K’s been playing soccer also.

There is no official score of soccer games or team standings at M and K’s level. The Rec & Ed department wants to keep it more focused on learning the games and teamwork and sportsmanship. Which is fine - M has learned a lot about playing team sports from soccer and flag football. It has sometimes been painful to watch him make a mistake or just miss making a big play, but that’s how it goes, and eventually he will be the one to make the big play for his team. The same thing is true for K, although I think being 2 years behind M, the teamwork lessons are still sinking in and his team is not quite as organized and advanced as M’s.

Science Olympiad is a brain challenge, not a physical one, but it’s still competitive – you first have to win the right to go the Olympiad itself by showing you’re better at the event than the other kids in your school who are trying out, then you have to compete at the Olympiad against the other schools. Last year there were 18 or 19 other schools at the Olympiad, so there was a lot of competition. M competed but didn’t win a medal; He stood on the gym floor while the kids went up on the stage to get their medals. I think he was sad about it because of all the work he had put into it.

It’s hard to watch your child lose to some other child or team, but lately I’ve been thinking that it’s a good thing for him at this stage that he is getting a good dose of losses along with the wins. He, and most of the other kids who are competing on these teams at his school, are so overwhelmingly fortunate in most ways that it seems only right that they lose something every once in a while to remind them that life isn’t always going to come easy for them, and they won’t be able to just show up and win.

I’m really proud of the kids when they work hard and take their jobs seriously, whether it’s homework or sports or cleaning their rooms (just kidding about the last one.) I don’t care if they win or lose as long as they work hard and listen to the coach or the teacher or their mom and dad.