Ever heard that before?
Vince Lombardi, the man the Super Bowl trophy was re-named after, said it.
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Certainly, he backed up his words with actions.
For the rest of the coaches and athletes out there, especially in high school, winning is definitely a goal, but it is not everything, nor should it be.
“Winning at all costs could be detrimental to any program,” Montrose High’s former soccer coach Doug Tea said.
Playing the best players in a team sport, especially at the varsity level, is almost expected.
“We could play everyone equally and not have as much success, but at the varsity level we owe it to the kids there to put them in the best possible position to win,” Tea said.
“As a coach you have to handle different kids and not every wrestler can be a state champion,” Montrose High’s head wrestling coach Jack Garrison said. “For some, (success) is about making varsity. For others it’s about winning one or two matches. For others, it is about winning a state championship.”
When Garrison was competing, however, winning was everything.
“If I lost, I’d think about it and think about it and I’d want to wrestle that guy again,” he said.
That tenacity helped him win a national championship for Western State College.
As a coach, he admits he still wants to win, but his role has changed.
“It’s easier as an athlete,” he said. “As a coach you still sweat with them, cry with them and bleed with them, but you have to watch 14 kids wrestle; it’s 14 times what you go through as an athlete. It’s more nerve-wracking and constant.”
But why is winning and being the best the focus of so many athletes? Why doesn’t the kid who has the most fun win?
It’s a cultural thing.
“It is and has always been American zeal to to be first in anything we do, and to win, and to win, and to win,” Lombardi said. “It is a reality of life that men are competitive and the most competitive games draw the most competitive men. That’s why they are there - to compete. To know the rules and objectives when they get in the game. The object is to win fairly, squarely, by the rules - but to win.”
“(Winning) beats the alternative,” Olathe High’s head wrestling coach, Harvey Starbuck said.
When he first started coaching in Carbondale, he said he was “way on the other end” of winning.
In Olathe, however, the wrestling team’s motto for the past 15 years has been the “the tradition continues.” The Pirates have a tradition of winning that began when they won Colorado’s first state title in 1936 at 98 pounds.
For many athletes, however, the pressure to win might be self-imposed.
“I put a big emphasis on (winning),” Montrose’s Cutter Garrison said. “If I’m not winning, I don’t feel like I’m giving it my best.”
Last year Garrison placed third in the state, wrestling at 103 pounds. Before this season he set the following goals: to be a regional champ, win a state title and go undefeated.
Pretty lofty goals that surely won’t be easy to achieve.
If they were easy to achieve, would they be very rewarding?
“Success is like anything worthwhile. It has a price,” Lombardi said. “You have to pay the price to win and you have to pay the price to get to the point where success is possible. Most important, you must pay the price to stay there.”
Being a senior has also driven Garrison to work out in the wrestling room while many of his teammates were playing on different fields this fall.
“For me, I know this is it; I have to give it all that I have,” he said. “I’ll be disappointed (if I don’t reach my goals), but I set my goals high to reach for them. If I don’t reach them, then I’ll learn from it.”
While winning is a goal of most athletes, some wins are more meaningful than others; Super Bowl champions, national champions and state champions are who most people remember.
On a journey with eyes focussed on the top, setting and reaching goals along the way is important.
“Goals are great tools for finding small success along the way,” Tea said.
When soccer season began this fall, everyone on his team was involved in the discussion about what the team’s goals should be. Then they wrote them down and were encouraged to hang them some place where they would see them everyday. Sort of a reminder of the bigger picture to justify the hard work they were doing and the sacrifices they were making.
“I firmly believe that any man’s finest hour, the greatest fullfillment of all that he holds dear, is the moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle-victorious,” Lombardi said.
In every competition, however, there must be a loser and a winner.
Nobody ever wants to lose, but the athletes who have the courage to fail, learn from their failures and come back stronger might be the ones who eventually come out on top.
“If (winning) doesn’t happen, look at yourself, see what’s going on and make adjustments,” Starbuck said.
“We’ve always learned more from our losses than our wins,” Tea said. “They’re a chance to analyze what we need to get better at.”
If losing can be a productive tool to improve, why does it hurt so much?
“I think we got down on ourselves (when we lost to Gunnison High’s football team) because we knew we could have beat them,” Olathe High’s fullback Davey Rhodes said. “It wasn’t because we aren’t that good of a team, we just didn’t play as good as we could have.”
“If you know you can win, then losing is really going to suck because you didn’t play your best and didn’t give it your all,” Olathe High’s quarterback Billy Harrison said. “It’s not quite as bad if you know they’re the more superior team than you, but it still hurts. In our eyes, we’re better than anybody so a loss is always going to hurt.”
Athletes are also motivated differently. Some are motivated to win, others are motivated to avoid losing.
The ones that just don’t want to lose, “it bothers them the most,” Starbuck said.
“It’s easy to have faith in yourself and have discipline when you’re a winner, when you’re number one,” Lombardi said. “What you’ve got to have is faith and discipline when you’re not a winner.”
Winning, however, might just be the easiest way to gauge success.
There are, of course, numerous other successes athletes achieve whether they win or lose.
They learn the value of hard work. They learn the value of team work and they build relationships by being a member of a team.
“Watching a team come together and work together has a little bit of magic to it,” Tea said. “When they want to be successful for the guy next to him.”
Gaining skills, confidence maturity and discipline are also successes that often fall under the radar.
Without the pursuit of greatness and an eye towards the top, however, these successes might not happen.
“By getting better the wins will happen, so we always start with that eye towards winning,” Starbuck said.
Win or lose, athletes who have dedicated themselves toward the pursuit of greatness will be better prepared once they enter the real world. The truth is, our society and the capitalistic economy that drives it also has winners and losers.
“I think (athletes) are better prepared to take on the challenges outside of the wrestling room and the field,” coach Garrison said.
Athletes who are scared to try new things because they’re afraid of failure will never improve. Athletes who aren’t afraid to risk their pride and everything else as they make sacrifice after sacrifice while pursuing their dreams will be the real winners. Even if they don’t reach lofty goals.
“In great attempts, it is glorious even to fail,” Lombardi said. “The spirit, the will to win and the will to excel - these are the things that endure and these are the qualities that are so much more important than any of the events that occasion them.”
Contact Cody Olivas at codyo@montrosepress.com
Kaitlyn Heichel wrote on Nov 3, 2009 2:01 PM:
Sarah Bond wrote on Jul 13, 2009 5:31 PM: