Wednesday, January 29, 2014

How to win without a scoreboard

In my opinion, people are too concerned about winning or succeeding to realize what had actually happened during their quest. This post is not about the journey to winning or succeeding and how you must enjoy the journey. No, no, no. This post is about how you can win even though the scoreboard has told you that your opponent had bested you.

The only time the scoreboard showed we were beating Newport :)

As an athlete, I understand that the object of sports is to win. Winning makes you look good. Winning makes people think of you. Winning makes you feel good. But what winning does not reflect your mistakes. Losing lets you remember what you and your teammates had done wrong. Some will see that as a downer, but I see that as a spot to improve on. Honestly, improvement is undervalued in this society, unless improvements lead to championships galore. On a skillfully disadvantaged team where only I, myself, have played more than 2 years of water polo, improvement is what drives us. Before each game, our coach tells us that she doesn't care what the scoreboard says, she just wants us to play our best and improve from the game before. And for the most part, we do. Some games we regress, but that is okay. The only way we can go is up from here, and we try our best to do so.

So how do you win a game without a score? It's with what you take away from the game. Whether you scored a great goal or had an amazing pass, you can take that and add it to your experience. The only way you can improve is by practicing and gaining experience. The scoreboard from tonight was not pretty, but you would never have guessed that we had gotten about ten kick-outs on the other team. (That is a good thing, just in case you do not follow water polo). That is an amazing feat considering they are all experienced players who know better than to make silly mistakes like they did. The most important thing that I take away from each game is the feel of support that I get from my team. Most of the time we lose our games, but I can count on my team to continue to be the awesome people they are. If you cannot walk out of a game loving everyone on your team, then you might as well have lost. In my heart, every game is a win even if the scoreboard does not show it.



This is what I saw on my pier tonight. I invite you to reflect on your pier about your wins.

1 comment:

  1. I LOVED this post and I'm writing a post with some similar thoughts soon. Thanks for sharing this important idea.

    ReplyDelete