Learning to Deal With a Loss

Sports can be one of the best ways to teach a youngster about failure. While athletes are always striving for victory, losing is an inevitable part of the process.

Coaches can use sports team websites and discussions at practice to teach players about how to best deal with losing. While it happens to everybody, athletes must keep their overarching goals in mind. One loss shouldn’t tarnish years of progress.

Kentucky remembers one loss, not yet the wins

The Kentucky men’s basketball team was a heavy favorite heading into the NCAA tournament last month. After posting an undefeated record in the regular season that included impressive victories over Kansas, North Carolina, Louisville and West Virginia, most college basketball fans and pundits fully expected the team to win the national championship. However, Wisconsin found a way to pull off the upset win over Kentucky in the Final Four. The loss has been difficult for the players to deal with, The Courier Journal reported.

“We’re going to get talked about forever, being so close to a championship, undefeated and coming up short in the semifinal game,” center Willie Cauley-Stein told the news outlet. “That’s the stuff we’re going to have to live with. That’s what you’re going to remember about it, for the rest of your life, coming up short. You had the most unbelievable season, but you’re going to think of this one [loss].”

As time passes, the team will be able to appreciate all of the impressive feats of the season. Many of the athletes, such as Cauley-Stein, forward Karl-Anthony Towns and guards Andrew and Aaron Harrison, have an NBA future on the horizon. There will be other losses in their careers. The loss against Wisconsin could eventually become a valuable learning experience.

The many emotions of losing

According to The Huffington Post, losing brings out a number of different emotions in a fan. The blend of many thoughts at once is something that players often feel as well.

“It’s so fascinating, all the things that go into your response to a game, there’s so much individual variation,” wrote Eric Simons, author of ‘The Secret Lives of Sports Fans,’ according to the news outlet. “And it illustrates a really important point, I think, about how messy our response to life is. We can hold competing and even contradictory thoughts and emotions in our heads.”

Athletes can feel upset, proud, angry and happy at the same time, he said. By having an understanding of this multiplicity, it can be easier for a player to keep their emotions in check and understand the bigger picture.