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The Meaning of Success

December 8, 2015

All of the MHSAA’s fall season tournaments have ended. A small sliver of our hundreds of member school teams are clutching championship trophies.

Thankfully, those few trophies do not define success.

Some teams won their first ever MHSAA Regional title this fall, and a few more won their first MHSAA District championship ... and those go down in their local lore as the most successful teams in those schools’ histories. Deservedly so.

But even those situations do not define success adequately.

Some teams had their first winning record in many years. Some teams didn’t accomplish that goal but won twice as many games as the year before; and they rightfully claimed their seasons a success.

Some teams lost almost every game but kept pulling together without back-biting or complaining. And that too is success.

I once told a team of T-ballers I was coaching that they had a perfect record: six wins and six losses. Six times they had to deal with victories; six times they had to deal with losses. That’s also a good definition of success.

And finally ... singer/songwriter Sam Baker has written this lyric about his aspirations to play professional ice hockey: “I failed well; and that made all the difference.”

Risky Business

May 19, 2015

At a time when efforts to promote student-athlete health and safety are more obviously than ever at the top of our daily to-do list, it may seem ill-advised to suggest that kids need more danger in their lives. But they do! And that’s the point of 50 Dangerous Things (You Should Let Your Children Do) by Penguin Books.

From mastering the perfect somersault (#3) to melting glass (#47), and from climbing a tree (#28) to walking home from school (#18), authors Gever Tulley and Julie Spiegler demonstrate two obvious but often overlooked points: (1) that most of us learn by doing; and (2) that a sterile, bubble-wrapped world teaches us less than one in which we are allowed to play with fire (#45).

After-school sports and activities provide safe and supervised danger. A place to learn new skills, meet different people, perform under pressure and test one’s limits. A supervised place to engage in life before going out in the less supervised real world.