Winning is Everything

Several years ago when I was a young, ambitious coach I was on a job interview at a small college in Montana where basketball was THE EVENT. When a member of the search committee asked me about my views on winning, I replied, "Winning is everything . . . it is the only thing." I could tell she was a little taken aback by my intensity on the subject. Then I defined winning.

Winning to me is not about the scoreboard. The scoreboard never tells the entire story. It may be true the final score is what is celebrated by fans, written about in newspapers and discussed on television stations, but it is not always the entire story. The scoreboard is simply a piece of the journey involving the growth of the players and coaches.

For the Golden Eagles, a win is about three things:
1. Giving 100%.
2. Playing through every second no matter what the circumstance.
3. Learning from the experience.

Giving 100% means exhausting yourself totally. It means when a player departs the court, she could not have gone for another second. She has given her heart, her mind and her body to the game. She has left it all on the court not saving anything for the next day.

Playing through every second means there is no quitting, no letting up, no getting down at a missed shot, turnover or a great play by an opponent. It means that if we are down 20 points, we are still playing as if the game were on the line. It means that if we are up 30 points, we are still intense and focused, working on getting the most from our time on the court.

Learning from the experience means that we are looking for growth, recognizing the good as it comes and feeling great about it, but also always searching for a way to become better. If we learn to take something from each practice and each game, we are continually in the process of growing. Growing means we are getting better. Ultimately, it is what we should desire from our life experience--the opportunity to get better each day.

If we can do these three things, we will win on the scoreboard more often than we will lose. We will discover success. We will feel good about ourselves. We will find wins in some of our losses and discover that a win is not always as it appears on a scoreboard. We will strive to be our best and in being our best, we will truly have done something remarkable. And that is by far one of the most important aspects of winning--learning to feel good about who we are and what we have achieved.