Losing stinks…as athletic director when our coaches go through tough losing streaks I find the need to encourage them. It doesn’t work so well for me as a coach. I am a miserable self-encourager. Our men’s basketball team has gotten off to a horrendous start this year, not only not winning a game but not really even being close to a win. There are plenty of excuses for that; we are really young, a fairly tough early schedule, 4 guys we are counting on who haven’t even played yet, and on and on, but the truth is we just are not very good yet. We haven’t practiced well and thus have played lousy in games.
As Mr. Han says in the Karate Kid,”there are no bad students, just bad teachers.” So clearly I know where to place the responsibility for this poor start. My emotions run the gamut from embarrassment, anger, humility, and even to desperate moments of wanting to just run away. But every time that last feeling has hit me over the past month I am reminded why I got into coaching in the first place. I seriously considered going to seminary after college until I learned about a man named James Naismith. A devoutly Christian man, Naismith saw his ministry in athletics so along the way created the game which today is causing me so much love and turmoil. So I got into coaching to teach the game and try to represent Christian moral values as a ministry. Sometimes that “tough love” passion I have is harsh but it is still founded upon Christian principles. My problem is that winning, like with most people, is highly important. With me, it has been far too important at times, to the point where my self-worth is based upon it. That is not the way it should be. I know people that support Erskine athletics aren’t happy that Erskine basketball has had only one twenty-win season in the past 30 years but that is probably a much deeper problem than the current coach or our current team. I have had former coaches and alumni at Erskine tell me that we need a new coach but there have been 5 different coaches in that 30 year period, so change hasn’t proven to be the answer.
What appears to be the answer to me or at least what I feel convicted to do, is to keep fighting. I knew coaching at Erskine would be an uphill battle. I trusted God when I decided to leave a conference championship team to come to Erskine. At the time I had no idea so much losing would come our way but I have learned a very important lesson. I’ve come to realize, in my ever-progressing effort to follow what God wants from me, that Jesus doesn’t want us to be comfortable all of the time. If we don’t face adversity, i.e. losing, we could become complacent and turn our eyes from Him. Losing will always stink. Yet from that “stinkiness” has come some fine young men who have learned that life is hard and you better be prepared to keep fighting when you get knocked down. Twenty-seven young men haven’t learned that lesson very well yet this year, but they will. I hate losing but I also know that there are lessons in it. It has at times caused great misery for me and my family but by the grace of God it has never broken me. I want that to be the legacy of this year’s Erskine basketball team. We will not let losing break us, but instead it will make us fight harder to grow into the basketball players and people God intended. But hopefully that fight will include some wins, because honestly, losing….STINKS.
