Every parent has cheered for a child’s sports team, hoping for a win. But as my colleague John Schwartz writes, in his family, the best lessons have been learned from losing.
Mr. Schwartz’s son played football in high school for a team that was better known for its high grade point average than its performance on the field. The team record: 0 for 8.
I’m happy with the way things have turned out — even happier, I think, than if he had been on overwhelmingly winning teams. He earned each victory, and didn’t fall into the easy arrogance that comes with being No. 1. And who knows? If the teams had been stronger, Sam might not have had as many chances to be in the game…. Let other parents scream and curse at the opposing team, and berate their own kids over their performance. I’m just glad that Sammy was in the game.
Click here to read the full essay about kids and losing teams. What do you think? Did your child benefit from being in the losing end of a game? Or is it always better — and more fun — to win? Post your comments below.
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Having coached my Little League team to a 1-16 season, I can vouch for the fact that, at the time, it was mostly a painful experience for the kids, the parents, and for me.
The silver lining was a walkoff win in the bottom of the sixth inning of our last game. I apologized to the coach of the other team, since we celebrated as if we had just won the World Series.
The next season, with the largely the same crew, we won the division championship. What a great experience is was for all of us to have LOST, and then won!
— jackIt’s better to have played and lost than never to have played at all.
— FrancoisWhile my high school losses still wake me up some nights, I think they taught me resilience and perspective. Shockingly, the sun came up the day after a loss, and I learned that I can handle disappointment and still try hard the next time. On the other hand, losing too much (0 for 8) can have an overly negative effect - no matter how hard I try, I can’t win, so I’m not going to try. Better to, as they say, win some lose some.
— JesseJOHN SCHWARTZ RESPONDS: Thanks for these comments. Jesse, I encourage you to read the article. Sam himself says that winning is “infinitely better” than losing, and the football team did trounce two opponents in the games following the regular season. This included their 75-year-old rivalry with a nearby town, so that victory was especially sweet. The wrestling team had a number of good wins that kept morale high. So the point of the essay, really, was to focus more on the silver lining — not to deny that losing can be a cloud.
— John SchwartzI disagree entirely with these comments. While it unhealthy to always win, and will distort your view of life, it is infinitely worse to always lose.
These seem to be people to whom sport is more important than children’s pysches. It is destructive to always be losing and it is NOT worth it for some presumed benefit from the playing of sport.
I played 2 sports at school because we were required to do so. I sucked at both and my self esteem has never recovered An occasional loss is a good thing. Constant losing and you sacrifice children to the altar of sport.
Losing, when it is constant and repeated for years is not just “a cloud” it is a hammer that hits you in the gut every day. Would you ask kids to put up with an abusive parent because it was “good for them”? That’s the relationship between consistently losing teams and their players.
FROM TPP — Well hopefully you saw the comments from John’s son in the story who noted that winning is better.
— lornaIn my community, no official “score’ is kept in youth soccer games so no team loses. This is of course a complete farce as every kid on each team knows the score and whether they’ve won or lost. I think the idea that kids need to be protected from losing is a bad one, both for its inherent dishonesty and b/c it fails to lay the foundation that losing is OK, and that, no matter how good you are or how hard you try, you will sometimes lose.
I coached my son and daughter in our 5-6 year old soccer league last spring and saw the impact of winning and losing on my children, and was quite surprised. We started off badly, getting clobbered 8-2 and 5-1 in our first two games. My son took it on himself to will us to win, and we did, finishing the last six games with 4 wins and 2 ties. When we replayed the team that beat us 8-2 my son was everywhere, my daughter tough on D and my goalie fantastic and we lead 2 to 1 with only one quarter (10 minutes) to play. Before the start of the last quarter my son asked me, “Dad what happens if they score two goals and we don’t get any?” “Well, then they will win.” He just nodded.
The other team was used to winning, having beaten everyone else by big scores, and were pushing hard to tie the score, though some of the kids had tears in their eyes with the thought of losing. All the action was at our end of the field and shot after shot was taken at our goal. One finally went through, to tie the game at 2 to 2, which is how the game ended. The coaches, parents and players all thought it was a great game (very high quality play, esp. in light of their ages). Afterwards my son said, “That was a good game dad. I’m glad we tied. No one should have lost that game.”
He was so right, of course. In a game without an official score, where everyone played his or her heart out, a tie was the best result.
— Tim SI didn’t like team sports or a sport where I had direct interaction with an opponent (example: tennis) because I felt like my outcome depended too much on others and I didn’t like pressure from my teammates. I thought they took the “game” too seriously and it wasn’t fun. I did well, but I was bored waiting for the ball to come and ended up standing around talking to teammates or opponents on the field just to pass the time away. I would think some of the skills from these team sports would translate well into some individual sports and if that team player really loved to run, kick, hit, throw that he would automatically enjoy, marathons, swimming, boxing, javelin throwing, etc. but I don’t see that to often.
I prefer individual sports because they are fun to do and take years to master before being able to compete. When doing an individual sport you are soo focused on what you are doing, trying to do, want to do that there isn’t much time to observe others. An hour or two flies by soo quickly.
I think sports in the beginning until high school shouldn’t be about winning or losing. It should be about safety, improving strength, speed, agility, skills and enjoying the sport. I can’t help but think how the Japanese professional baseball leagues are known to play their games - letting the other win within a slight margin to save face, because they lost last time, etc. I don’t quite understand it but I heard there was some philosophy behind who wins and loses. Maybe it was to promote even competition, even playing field, sportsmanship - I don’t know…
— SanIn high school I joined a young county lacrosse team, which was allowed to play high school teams all over MD, without being part of any particular league. We seemed to be the team everyone had their bench players practice on, as we lost every game of the season by 10-15 points.
I enjoyed lacrosse; I enjoyed the practices and the athleticism and the camaraderie and the trips all over the state. I liked scoring goals and dominating other players defensively. I liked wearing my uniform to school and hanging out in lax shops looking at equipment. I liked using the lingo and being part of something. I didn’t need to win to benefit from sports.
I also learned a lot about what kind of coach and player I wanted to be as we played a variety of teams with different reactions to our immature skills. Some teams relished beating us by 20 points. Some teams used the games to practice all kinds of drills, without working too hard to score once they knew they had us beat.
I later coached a lacrosse team of 8 year olds who found themselves in a similar situation: included in a league of much more experienced players, where the average team had been together for at least 2 years. In addition to emphasizing skills and drills, I also tried to emphasize all the other great things about sports that I had discovered to help ease whatever heartache my 8 year olds were feeling.
I moved on, but they stayed with it and got better. And I don’t think any of us were the worse for having a losing season.
— HKBigleyMy son’s best soccer season ever came from 2 Hispanic coaches who focused ONLY on team play and strategy–I don’t think I ever heard the “W” word. The players were pretty inept with only one truly talented kid ( note: not my son). They lost their first four games as all the kids gave in to running madly after the ball and not staying in position. The coaches pointed out that they were not able to make the plays they had been practicing. They finally started to follow instructions, stay in position and communicate. The last game of the season they beat the one undefeated team in the league 2-1. In victory they were calm and pleased. I am ashamed to say that they also got to see a shocking display of horrible sportsmanship on the part of the other opposing team fathers.
— hillary2012My point: Win or lose– if you work hard on improving your technique and stay calm and focused - you can be proud of yourself.
I always figured losing a game was a great opportunity to learn from one’s mistakes. Whenever my daughter loses or makes an error during a soccer game we simply discuss what happened and think up strategies so she can improve. This may include practicing on our own time or simply making sure she gets enough rest prior to important games. Of course, it’s always nice to win but the greatest lessons usually involve some type of loss.
— RunL.A.It has nothing to do with winning or losing and everything to do with the culture you create around the team. There are people who will always hate to lose, but in my experience, it’s more fun to be on a fun losing team than a winning team where the weaker players never get on the field and the captain/coach is screaming at everyone all the time.
Of course, it’s the most fun if you can win and have a healthy sporting culture but for youth sport (and amateur adult sport that I still play) people play for fun. If you win but no one comes back next week, then no matter what your record, you’ve lost…
— JohnIn life, it is far more important to lose graciously than to win. More often than not, we lose: in many competitions, there is only one winner, and we can’t all be winners all the time.
So, let’s not pretend that we are winners even when we are not, and accept the fact that we are losers most of the time. That will keep us humble when we, on rare occasions, actually win.
Pianist Jon Nakamatsu’s speech on YouTube from the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition for Outstanding Amateurs in 2007 is a wonderful encapsulation of this important lesson that we all must remind ourselves.
— Ken Iisakai coach my kids (10 and 8) in football (soccer) and basketball and they indeed want to win. they, especially my son, struggle extensively with losses. but sometimes i’m surprised when they deal with it easily. this seems to happen when the’ve given their best. they are getting better at managing their disappointments with losing and exuberances with winning as time develops, but the competitive spirit (which they seem to have gotten from their father) still jumps up and bites hard sometimes.
i’ve had to reflect a lot on whether to coach my kids — as parenting and coaching often do not mix easily. i’ve also had to look at how i act/react when playing team sports, which i still do.
what i find missing in sports, and organized kid sports in particular, is the element of resolving your own disputes on the field/court. this is what i love about my favorite game, which i’ve picked up again over the last year. ultimate. frisbee, that is, 7-on-7 on a football sized-pitch with end zones for catching a point. refs are not used, or needed, ever. either in pick-up or tournaments. in fact, in the old days, if you fouled someone, you had to call the foul, not the person who got fouled. now, the foulee calls it, and there are rules to govern each situation the fouler contests the call. so without refs, the ethos of the game — the spirit of the game, as it is called — almost always rises above the competitive nature of the game. and the game is highly competitive, but always fun, win or lose.
ultimate has been tagged counter-culture. and so be it. but the lessons of dealing with winning and losing are much more manageable and palatable when the refs are taken out of the equation. the enjoyment is in learning and excelling in the game as best you can, win or lose.
if more kids were playing this game, we’d probably find our kids to be more balanced. you’d have far fewer hyper-angry parents on the sidelines, too. my 10 year-old is starting to play ultimate and i think that he understands that it is all just for fun, but you always try your best. either that, or it just plain wears him out, as it is far more taxing physically that football or basketball.
— gregThis seems to be “in the air”. Recently, I wrote this article for our local paper, The Journal of the San Juans”:
“On some recent wanderings around the Island, I was struck by how few kids (or anyone else for that matter) were “just” playing. Sure, there are some out there hitting balls at the courts. Every now and then, one sees a group of ultimate Frisbee players, and a handful of the usual kids grinding on their skateboards. But these are exceptions and not the rule.
What has happened? Unfortunately, childhood is not as safe as in past. Even in our relatively protected environment, fewer parents are willing to let their kids go off by themselves. It is not news that children have become progressively more sedentary.
My Space and video games have begun to replace physical activity as the vehicle for social interaction. At the same time, our culture has developed an obsession with organized sports at all levels and a mania for joyless fitness.
It wasn’t all that long ago that a child would learn a few basics, usually from a parent, like hitting and catching or kicking a ball. Then he or she went off with their friends for a pickup game. Rules were few, often made up on the spur of the moment, and the score didn’t matter. Some of the kids also played on a formal team and some didn’t, but EVERYONE “just” played.
Now, if a child is to swing a bat or strike a soccer ball, it has to be in a league, usually with rules, often uniforms, schedules, and officials. Informal instruction has given way to coaching, training, and camps for even the youngest participants. This may all begin with a wide variety of kids with differing abilities, but things quickly are sorted out. The message has become: “you can play only on a team and only if you’re good enough.”
Often there is no longer a middle ground. There emerges a divide between those on teams and those who do nothing at all. The trend is for those not playing to withdraw, often permanently, from vigorous activity. It is also not rare for those who continued on in organized sports to lose the joy and spontaneity that came with the games of early childhood. So, by the time they are adults, sports means watching not doing.
Don’t get me wrong, I love to both teach and watch young athletes. The value of structured physical activity in the development of the child is without question. The higher the level, the more a player’s satisfaction is derived from the quality of their performance, and, yes, winning. But at the end of the day, if there is no fun or joy, the achievement is an empty one. It is a constant coaching challenge not to forget this. Practice must always be intense and disciplined, but there must always be time made not for one more drill but for free play. Kids need that freedom. The bonus is that in that unregulated environment that they are matching their training with the personal creativity necessary to effectively develop their game.
The message is, as in all things in life, there must be balance. Encourage your children to participate in organized sports but let them know that is more than OK to
“just” play as well. Watch them play and play with them. Let them go play with their friends and you go play too!”
Mark Fishaut MD
— Mark Fishaut MDPediatrician
Coach, Friday Harbor High School Varsity Girl’s Soccer
I was part of a high school football team that went on an amazing undefeated streak until, in the NY state championship game, we lost by one point on the final play - by failing on a 2-pt conversion.
— B AnanDid this teach people that there is more to life than games, that there is life off the field? Did it knock the arrogant golden boys off their pedestals? Or perhaps it was a sad coda to childhood, the realization that we can’t win forever. Maybe it was just one more thing in life or not very important at all.
Let’s put it this way, that was 15 years ago and I still don’t know.
“success is counted sweetest/by those who ne’er succeed”…
— KI played a lot of sports in high school. In one sport, the team was mediocre, but I was an integral starter. The other team won state championships, and I came off the very end of the bench only for a few minutes during our blow out regular-season wins.
Guess what means the most to me? Hanging on by my fingernails to that last spot on the roster. My achievements were invisible to the outside world and strangely detached from any W-L count; they had everything to do with the discipline, patience, and self-confidence I ultimately developed after long periods of frustration.
In the right context, losing can be the very best thing for kids. What do you learn from an easy victory? Nothing. Its our job, as adults, to cultivate character in our little athletes, to let them see sport not as the measure of success but simply as the means by which their courage and discipline are tested. Then they will succeed, regardless of the score.
Two things: one, looking back from my present vantage point, my experience playing sports has two edges: one edge was a very positive self image from successfully performing athletic skills, but getting a serious knee injury left me with a loss and a question of how to value myself.
two, coaching has become an intriguing interest; I’m fascinated by successful and unsuccessful coaches’ abilities to motivate athletes and other team members; e.g the transformation the Tampa Bay Rays under their current coach.
— JoelI played both rugby and football throughout high school. In football, everyone cared about winning, the games were clean, and if you happened to bump into the other team at a bar after the game (this was in Canada), then it usually lead to a fistfight.
In rugby, on the other hand, we were known as being a very rough team. “Moral points” came not from winning, but from hitting the other team hard enough (or dirty enough) that they had to get carried off the field. In rugby you can only substitute four injured players in the course of the game, and if we managed to hurt more than four that was always a wonderful thing. But we’d often go out drinking with the other team after the game, and we never engaged in the sort of “I’m tougher than you” nonsense off the field.
Rugby was about personal honour, not about winning. It was far rougher, but it never lead to a gang mentality. Football had a “winning is everything” mentality that infected the post game. I much preferred rugby.
http://www.boldizar.com
— BoldizarAs a teacher for 30 years in jr. high and high school, I heartily agree that losing is perhaps even more important than winning. Our teams almost always made it to the state championships, and when we won the title year after year, the kids on those teams became arrogant and intolerant. And of course the next years’ teams then assumed they HAD to be winners, or they were “losers.” I was alway happy when I came to school and heard that we had lost a game now and then.
— Bruce C-MI was on a college team that won a national champioship (D3), a high school team that was pretty good my senior year, and a grade school team that almost never won. I learned something from each of those. Teams sometimes win, but more often steam lose games from mistakes. Learn from the mistakes and you get better. I would rather have been on teams that showed me what it took to win - in life or on the field - than to have been on teams that just won from overwhelming talent. iInning IS good, but learning how to win, as well as how to lose gracefully, were the important lessons I took from sports.
— Mike CNo one likes to lose and healthy competitiveness is undoubtedly a good thing in life, when appropriate.
But losing can be liberating and just plain motivating. One loss is more educational than 5 wins.
Seems unfortunate when parents shield their kids from loss, the challenge of hardship, and the fun of getting better..
If, as a kid, one loses, and Mom or Dad communicates, “I love you no matter what happens,” it takes pressure off winning and makes winning less difficult the next time. Winning becomes that much sweeter.
— WesleyI played for losing football teams for four years in middle and high school (5 wins) before finally playing for winning ones in my junior and senior years. It was a horrible experience knowing that we were the team circled in for wins prior to that, but we had a coach who focused on getting better and playing our best, not obsessed with winning and it finally payed off. During the last two years when we were winning, he never pushed the idea that we had to win, just play hard and it will take care of itself. It’s surely rubbed off as I moved on in life as the lesson was to compete and do your best and that there was no problem with losing, but in not striving to win.
By the way, my junior and senior year we won seven homecoming games on opponent’s home fields as they scheduled us as the “easy win”. That was sweet.
— JNWickerI really liked this article. I played Varsity tennis in high school and lost a lot. I was a good student so in my school work, if I worked hard and did my best I was usually rewarded with a good grade. Not so with tennis. I could work hard and do my best and lose. I wasn’t a great player. I wasn’t like Sam and didn’t spend hours in the gym to improve but I learned a lot. I learned to deal with the disappointment and move on.
Now, I’m watching my daughter learn these same lessons. Her soccer team had a great season last fall, winning 6 out of 8. As a result, they were moved into a different group with the better performing teams for the spring season. Unfortunately, the team’s best player decided to move to another, more competitive league. So, they had the disadvantage of losing their best player and facing better teams. They lost every single game 0-8. They were not happy and it was clearly discouraging to all of them.
But, I agree that they learned more from that season. Their play improved a lot by going up against these good teams. And, for some kids, it crystallized for them what they like or don’t like about soccer. They also won the sportsmanship award and get to go to a pro game as a result — their ability to lose with grace recognized. They started out this season losing their first game but only 1-0 and playing very well. We’re hoping they at least win a few this season because, as Sam says, winning is definitely better!
— BobbiOne of the first dad’s I worked with as a youth coach was hyper-competitive, as am I. But the last comment to his players before each game, which he posed as a question, was, “What is the most important thing?” To which his players were taught to scream, “Have fun!!” That was 15 years ago, and I still use that with line. I hate to lose any game, but if I have won and the kids are not happy, we have all lost. This same coach taught me another basic lesson which I have heard since, and which I have seen numerous times: kids get over a loss before they are off the field, and parents get over a loss before they get home, while coaches take at least 24 hours. Winning is important, and that should be the ultimate goal. Learning to make a commitment to achieve success should be one of several goals in any program, albeit at the younger ages developing social skills more than athletic skills should probably be the priority. But for the long term health of any youth sports program, the youth involved, AND the coaches involved, if kids are not playing, and they are not having fun, the program has failed. In fact, the evidence is quite overwhelming that no youth program has ever died because of their won-loss record, but many have failed because of an over-emphasis on winning.
— John HI coach little league basketball, and I have done so for years. In my view, how kids take winning or losing is entirely dependent on the coach. I do not necessarily encourage the kids to win, but I do try to put them in the best position to win. Nevertheless, whether my team wins or loses what I emphasis is how hard they play. I tell them that what matters is not whether they win or lose, but whether they played hard and avoided mental mistakes. I am very proud of the fact that my players normally give 100 percent during the games — regardless of the score. In the end, I believe what is truly important for the kids is whether they are having fun, and whether can they be proud of their performance (i.e., they gave 100 percent).
— Amy