The Losing Effect

Let's face it... losing really stinks! Being a winner is easy. You can bask in your glory, celebrate with the other coaches, and everyone's pretty happy.

It’s losing that’s hard. Not necessarily the losing part, but being a loser. No one likes to take that role. I can’t imagine how hard it must be for Coach and the others on the team. They put in hard work getting kids out on the field, practicing, & breaking down film and they’re paid off with a big, fat loss. The overflow effects at home aren’t good either.

Our girls after the first game

We lost our second varsity game in a row this past Friday and we have some tough competitors coming up in the next few weeks. We had so many injuries on the field that we had to start putting in our second string. After several turnovers and too many touchdowns by the other team, the score was pretty grim. It shed a whole new light on the phrase, “adding insult to injury”. Coach is an exceptionally poor loser (he’ll be mad that I’m confessing that fact to the general public). Don’t get me wrong. He shakes hands with the other team and puts on a happy face, congratulating the others on their win, but he really doesn’t like to lose. Three years ago, his beloved Lions were, to put it nicely, horrible. They were 0-16 on the season and bragged the only non-win season in NFL history. The next year was better, but not much. Each time the team would lose, Coach would stalk around the house in a surly mood, not really wanting to talk to anyone. He’d respond if you said something, but the permanent scowl was cemented on his face. To add salt to his loser’s wound, not only did his pro football team have a season that left something to be desired, the following spring his beloved UNC Tarheels basketball team had a less-than-stellar season. The previous year, they’d had a great season, ending as the NCAA tournament champions. They followed it up not the next year by not even making it into the tournament. Not a good sign for Coach as a die-hard fan and definitely not a good sign for our household. There was a lot of sulking and frowning that year.

Here's his happy face today

So now that it’s his own team, he’s a miserable mess. He stalked around the house in a pretty irritable mood yesterday and we couldn’t snap him out of it. Losing affects him really badly, and I didn’t know what to say to help him out of the fog. We tried to take his mind off of it. As our only full day as a family, I tried to keep us busy all day to keep his mind off of the previous night, but I could tell he was still thinking about it. What do you say to a coach when he’s on the losing end? Obviously I’m no expert, and if anyone has any suggestions, please feel free to share! The only thing I can say is, for those of you who are having a better season than us, enjoy it!