Learning from Losing

Strike up the Osbourne Brother’s hit “Rocky Top,” flip on the Friday night lights, strike up the bands, and listen for the chanting cheerleaders- IT’S FOOTBALL TIME IN TENNESSEE! Football season means so much to so many people, that there is a nostalgia that cloaks the true meaning of the game- it brings us together. It gives young men and women a stage to display their pride and talents, and it allows a select few to be Coaches. I capitalized the word “Coaches” to emphasize the important role they play in moulding youngs into Men. We can analyze how they make their players excel in the game and help them become better players through drills, watching tape, and working out, but good coaches know exactly what they are doing- they are teaching their players how to lose and how to die with pride.

Now hold on, give me a chance to explain. I also had a visceral reaction when I heard these exact words. I was shocked at what I was hearing, and it was issued by the booming voice of the legendary Fred Sorrells. Fred Sorrells coached and taught for 40 years (1959-1999), twenty-two of which were spent at Burley Stadium. It would be nearly impossible to calculate the amount of people he influenced and helped throughout his life, some of which, like me, he doesn’t really know. His stories live on for me through Coach Todd Newberry, who is a very dear friend of mine- we have taught and coached together for over a decade now, and I would be pressed to find a more loyal friend. Coach Sorrells was inducted into the TSSAA Hall of Fame in 2007 for his continued service to not just athletes, but also the coaches across our great state.

Back to the draw-dropping statement about losing and dying. I heard this speech from Coach Sorrells last year at the FCA golf tournament, and, like I said, I was confused at first. But the more I listened the more I understood how profound his words were becoming. You will want to take this in because it changed my whole paradigm on life, and I know that it has made me a better man.

“We have to teach our young men how to die.” This was followed with “lose” as well. He said “It’s easy to be a winner”- to stand in the spotlight and receive love and praise. It’s easy to be healthy, to be able to throw 300 pounds over your head as if it were nothing. He wasn’t talking about the process of becoming a winner or achieving goals- of course, those things take hard work. He was talking about the product (success) of those things. The product of success that never lasts very long. What happens when the product spoils? There is always another opponent, another axe to grind, another challenge, another wave on another wave- “And you will surely be swept away,” he said.

I had so many questions:
When the time of your inevitable defeat arrives, whether that be a challenge or that life has decided to pull the rug out from underneath you, how will you react? Did you have that Coach that said, “Back on your feet, GET UP!” when you fell on your face? Did you have that Coach that pushed you far beyond what you thought you were capable of, so that when you lost you took pride in your loss because you knew that you put everything you had into it? You learned from your defeat. Where will your mind be when you reach the end of your road? Will you hang your head and limp off the field of life because you knew you didn’t prepare or put in your best effort?

As he was speaking to all the coaches, he made it abundantly clear that this was our mission. We needed to do an inventory of our own hearts and see what was at the center. He said in closing that “if you coaches have the desire in your heart to create young people that can face losing and death with pride because they have given everything they have to hold one another up in service, they gave their very best effort because you were their rock of support. They hold their heads high no matter what happens, well, my friends, you can put that in the win column.”