Challenges Create Champions

The great thing about athletics is how it relates to life situations. Life always offers opportunities for personal growth whether we want them or not. Playing basketball games is a journey of learning, growing from mistakes, keeping a head held high when things don't go the way we want them to and keeping faith in our abilities when the scoreboard doesn't end in our favor.

We are a team who could be 6-0 but instead we are sitting at 2-4. With every close loss, there is a heartache, a vacancy so deep and wide, it could fill the New River Gorge. If we begin to think like a 2-4 team, we will discover more losses, and we will not play to our abilities. If we know the truth as something different and think as if we were undefeated, we will play like a confident team with all our abilities.

This is a critical point in our journey. Do we look at ourselves and see losers or do we choose to see our depth, our strength, our courage? It is not our past which determines who we are; it is what we gain from our experiences. Now is the time for the Golden Eagles to make choices. What choice we make will determine our future. Are we going to allow our mistakes at the end of the games make us into a team who expects more of the same? Or can we choose to see each mistake as a stepping stone toward success?

Players with courage and confidence know this: a missed opportunity, an error, a mistake remains a failure only if we fail to learn from it. Learning from our losses will give us more than wins; it will provide us with the knowledge of our depth--our ability to overcome, to face adversity, to know with certainty when life throws us a curve ball, we can still hit it out of the park. Only a pessimist believes the journey is over this early in the season. Only a team without heart gives up and gives in before the last game is played.

There is always an option with each loss we face. Do we face our struggle with courage or do we give in to fear? Do we use these first games to make us stronger or do we allow them to make us weaker? It is not the outcome of the game which is so important; it is how we perceive it. If we can gain strength, look deep within ourselves and find a depth we did not know we had, we are better for our losses.

When I see our team, I see winners. I see women with heart and determination, with desire to be better, to learn from their experiences, and to grow as players and as people. I believe this team is full of champions. I hope they believe the same.