People always talk about the lessons that can be learned from losing; myself included. As I've discussed before in this blog, losing in sports can motivate and bring about some of the greatest successes. However, I think there is another important aspect in losing that is often overlooked: losing with pride. You may not understand what I mean, so I'll give you two examples. My basketball team senior year was playing for the district semifinal against the #3 ranked school in the state. They were bigger than us, stronger than us, and on paper they were straight up better than us. We prepared for weeks for this game. When it was finally game time, we were pumped up and ready to go. We played extremely well: at halftime we were up by 3. The second half was a battle, and we were up by 5 with a little over 2 minutes left in the game. In my opinion, the referees screwed us in those last few minutes, making consecutive horrendous calls that negated some of our baskets and forced us to give up possession multiple times. We ended up losing by 4. We were heartbroken. Tears streamed down all of our faces, for we had come so close. Not a sound was made as we entered the locker room. When coach came in, he stood there silent for a moment as well. Then he told us to pick our heads up. He told us to be proud; we had played a hell of a game. Every second the clock was ticking all five players on the floor were giving 100%. Although we had lost, we all walked out of the locker room, chins high, eyes still filled with tears as we walked to the bus. We may not have won the game, but we left everything we had on the floor, and that meant something. I truly learned that day that sometimes it's not about the final score: what matters is your desire and effort.
There was another game in my high school career where we lost to an awful team, one we hadn't lost to in a number of years. It was truly embarrassing. Once again, our coach entered into a silent locker room after the game. He once again told us to pick our heads up and own that loss. Nobody had gone out there and lost the game for us. We played awful, and we had nobody but ourselves to blame. How shameful it was to keep our chins up and own that despicable loss.
There's two sides to losing with pride: being proud of what you did accomplish when nobody said you would even come close, and accepting when you simply blew it. Personal accountability is a lesson many people go their entire lives without fully understanding. The art of selling yourself short is something people in the real world are notoriously good at doing these days. Through some painful experiences and inspiring experiences in high school sports, I can now recognize in all aspects of life when I give a valiant effort. I am better able to give myself credit in the midst of an apparent loss. On the other hand, I'm also better at taking personal responsibility when I mess up (which I do fairly often). These are skills that I know I'm going to need later in my professional career and even in my personal life, and I'm grateful to have had experience in perfecting these skills through my participation is sports.