2 Reasons Losing Gracefully Makes Young Sports People Winners
Often youth sports experience sore losers but this experience can be better than winning
Losing is the greatest gift that a young person can get.
There are two reasons for this.
Firstly, from the coach or parent’s point of view they did not set them up for losing. If they did they are not a good coach, plain and simple. All coaches should try to improve an athlete and by doing so more often than not they will seek to win. But losing happens.
It’s a fact of life.
So, why is losing beneficial for the coach or parent?:
The reality is the coach or parent is removed from the loss. Because they have been doing the opposite I.e. preparing them to win, the athlete or player knows that effectively, on the day of the loss, there was another team better than their team or there was another individual athlete better than them.
From this experience of losing the player knows that they should have done ‘this’ or should have done ‘that’ because that’s what they practiced to do.
At some stage after the game or performance, they’ll meet with their coach or parent, and if only in preparation for an up and coming game or contest, they’ll have to refer back to the loss for guidance. If it hasn’t happened in the young person’s mind that they could have controlled themselves better, could have taken other choices in the game, and essentially could have done better than it will at this stage.
The coach or parent doesn’t have to say something like:
“I told you so!”
because it’s not about being right.
Rather, it’s about continual guidance from their point of view. After all, what’s gone is gone and the exact same scenario will never arise again in the future.
Losing is a gift:
Secondly, losing is important in sport because without it you will not learn.
Learning is how we improve both as people and as players.
Although no coach likes to lose, a great coach knows that losing is something they cannot provide to an athlete and that it can only make them a better player and a person. In turn, this can only help them win more in the future if they are willing to do so.
Losing presents an athlete with an experience that although they hated the feeling at the end of the game the feelings leading up to the game and throughout it must have somehow changed in their mind at some stage. For them, it’s about figuring out at what stage of the game or contest these feelings changed and why this is so.
By discovering why things changed during the losing experience a young athlete can begin to learn that this experience has taught them something for the future.
When does a young athlete or sports person realize they have lost?:
Pretty soon after the game, the penny will drop with the young person that they are either not as talented as the opposing team or person that beat them or they could have done better.
If they are not as talented and they have been coached properly up until this stage they will accept that they can still improve. Because the beauty of being a child or having youth on your side means that when given the right education, tools, and guidance, you will improve. Whether you will improve enough to beat the opponent who has just beaten you is questionable, but if the desire is there to play their sport in the first place then once the initial period of disappointment goes after losing, an attitude of ‘time to get back to work’ should be welcomed.
If you realize you could have done better then effectively the outcome is the same in that, you get your head down and you go to work on improving things.
Teaching young athletes to lose gracefully:
A coach or parent must realize that the teaching for a loss begins before the loss actually occurs. And it comes from imparting the importance of self-development in the first place.
The reality of children or young people competing in sport is that they do it without someone holding their hand on the field of play. Although they may be able to take ‘time outs’ now and then or to talk to a coach at half time, if they are to struggle in a game or performance then that struggle is determined by the lack of effort or proper preparation that they have put into their sport up until that point in time.
A great coach knows that ‘game day’ is just that, a day with a game.
And as with any game, winning or losing can occur as can every other scenario in between. This is simply because a ‘game’ means that there are opponents, weather conditions, referees, and other variables that cannot be controlled all of the time.
The work must be done well before their player steps out on their arena to perform otherwise losing is a real possibility.
Self-development:
A young child or person who wants to play a sport must have a desire to play it because they want to improve in some way. If they improve enough times before a game or contest, guess what? then they are going to win more times than they lose.
Winning is the reward for self-improvement.
Too many people feel that winning is something to aspire to but in reality, it’s the result of hard work and a willingness to improve. Let’s face it whether we are younger or older winning feels better than losing. But, it also feels much better when we feel we’ve earned it and not just got lucky.
Losing as a youth should be looked at like being a swan. Above the water, there is what seems to be a picture of grace, but underneath you immediately realize that you have to work hard to get where you want to be in the future.
Like any swan, there is no one pushing or pulling them, they just keep their head up and keep gliding on.
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