by The Howitzer

I have to admit it. I love to coach. If I had it to do all over again, I would probably go into coaching. There is such power in a team. With a team you can do so much more together than you can do by yourself. The thing that draws me to coaching is trying to figure out how to position your team to compete. Notice I said compete not win. I can’t always control whether or not I win (sometimes the other guys just outplays you) but I can control how I play the game. Winning is great but I think the core life lessons are learned by laying your heart out there and trying to accomplish something great. Now don’t get me wrong, I am not one of these “everybody’s a winner” kind of guys who doesn’t try to win. Actually, I don’t care if we are playing tiddlywinks or horseshoes I am going to try to kick your butt (in Christian love of course). But, winning is not that important to me. It’s the thrill of the deal that turns my crank. The smell of the battle is invigorating. To me the fun is in competing. And to quote a sage, “sometimes you win and sometimes you lose”. PROFOUND!

Over the course of my life I have won my share of championships and I have tasted my share of defeat. The thing that those things have in common is my worth as a person didn’t change because I won or because I lost. I coach a lot of youth sports and I look forward to our first loss of the year. I always like to ask the kids after our first loss if we won or lost the game. They are usually discouraged and say, “we lost” (insert whining voices here). Then I ask them, “so, are we winners or losers?” If they have never played for me they usually say, “we’re losers”. Right there we may have one of the most teachable moments in life. Are you a loser because you lost a game? How you answer that questions may say as much about you as any other that you will answer. The Scripture says, “The righteous man falls seven times but gets back up.” Being a winner is about an attitude of the heart not a number on a scoreboard that no one will remember a year from now. Being a winner is about setting your face in the winds of all adversity and pressing through. Most of the losers I know in life usually win on the scoreboard (at least for a while).

One of my favorite winner moments came after one of my biggest life defeats. I had resigned from a job that was not a great fit for me and because of the public nature of my position the resignation was also very public. It was very embarrassing and I was very discouraged and also very alone. It would have been very easy to just quit, but I couldn’t. My wife was staying home with my one-year-old son and we needed to eat and pay bills and continue on even though everything within me wanted to quit. I turned my face into the wind and willed my way through. We survived. We thrived. We didn’t let defeat snatch our heart. We didn’t give up. I learned a valuable lesson about myself at that time; I am a winner even in the midst of defeat. They say that a true measure of a man is what it takes to stop him. We have to press on through.

Last night we played in the U7 and U8 district baseball tournament. Back when I played the district tournament was for regular season teams, which has a combination of good, average and poor players. These days because winning is so important everybody is playing all-star teams. We took our regular season team and sprinkled a few new players from some other teams in our league. Last night we ran into the buzz saw. The boys were a little nervous and didn’t show up till about the 4^th inning. By that time the score was 15-1. We scored 4 in the top of the 4^th and got mercy-ruled. All night I have been thinking through what I was going to say to our team tonight in our second game. Let me practice on you.

“Boys, all year we have never asked you to win games. If you remember, we have asked only 3 things from you. We call these the ABCs of being a great team and a great player. A stands for ATTITUDE. We expect you to have a great attitude, respectful of the coaches, other players, umpires and the game. No whining or complaining we need for you to keep your mind in the right place. B stands for get BETTER. We don’t ask you to be the best we ask you to do your best and always try to get better. Improvement every game is what we are looking for. And finally we expect you to C listen to the COACH. In baseball and in life you will always have a leader. Your ability to follow leadership says a lot about you and ultimately says a lot about your leadership. We are training you to be men even though most of you are seven. Live out these ABCs and you will be a winner no matter what the scoreboards says. If you do these three things we will have a chance to win every game. Now let’s go out and kick some butt and takes some names.”

I may not say the last line cause some 7 years olds are not allowed to say butt. Maybe we should go out and kick some bottoms. I hope tonight we get better, but if we get it handed to us again we will take it like men and keep pressing forward. Winning is not everything. Struggling well is the goal!

Here is one of my favorite quotes of all time by Theodore Roosevelt, “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

Maybe I will use that one on them. Go Cardinals!