Winners Win, Losers Lose

Story by Evan Gentry

I miss the days when competition was true competition. There were winners and losers. Winning defined you as a champion and losing taught you sportsmanship and gave you the motivation to be a champion. Trophies were prized possessions, not just a figure showing participation.

This idea of everyone is a winner is killing competition. Then we wonder where our children’s drive to succeed has gone. People these days believe kids should not be losers. The sad reality is, in the game of life, there are winners and losers.

When I was child just emerging in the sports scene of little league baseball, youth football, and city basketball leagues, the name of the game was winning. I never received trophies for my participation. I always received a medal or a trophy for winning or being the runner up.

Of course not all people buy into the belief of everyone wins and no one loses. But for the ones that do, their children will suffer because of it. Those people will tell their young ones, “If you try your best, you will be a winner.”

This is not always true. Sometimes the child has to be pushed by either the coach and or their parents to be their best. Some of the most successful people in the world were pushed beyond boundaries they did not know existed.

Everyone wants to be a winner in sports and in life. Therefore we need to realize that competition does exist and we are going to fail. But we must learn from our failures. These failures will teach us how to succeed. We cannot let failure defeat us. As Thomas Edison says “I have not failed, I have found 10,000 ways won’t work.”

Therefore if you do not win in whatever you are doing, you should try everything possible to win. You must be willing to do things today that others won’t so that when it comes time, you can do things that others can’t.

Not everyone will win. Even the people who win the most will fail.

Michael Jordan, considered one of the greatest basketball players of all time, was cut from his high school varsity team during his sophomore year. Some people would have given up. He did not.

And neither should you.

Some people will ask, “What about the children having fun?” And to those people: having fun is what is ultimately important for a child or anyone competing. Everything about competition should be fun. To me personally, there is nothing more fun than winning a trophy for being the best. On top of that, sharing that with your teammates is one of the best feelings I have felt. Even losing with teammates is a great feeling because they are there to support you and push you for the next chance.