The thrill of victory and the agony of losing are something athletes experience all of their life. Have you ever experience winning against your rival in the regular season, then losing to that same team in the playoffs when it matters most? It's one of the worst feelings ever. This has happened now twice in my athletic career.
Earlier this year we defeated our rival in a very intense, emotional game that saw us as the victors, holding up the prized Little Brass Bell afterwards, thinking we were on top of the world. Sooner or later, we were undefeated, conference champs and ranked as high as #5 in the nation. We felt that as long as we could play our game and play the way we know how too we should be victorious every time. That seemed to be the case rolling through the first round of the playoffs, as the closest anyone got to us was 10 points within even tying us. Round 2 came around, and sure enough we are facing our rivals once again. We knew what they would do, they knew what we would do, pretty simple as that.
The game starts off with turnovers and turnovers on downs, what neither team wanted on their first drives. Throughout the game, something didn't seem right. It seemed that we weren't doing the little things consistently to give ourselves a chance to succeed. We had two good drives the whole game, something out of the ordinary for us. We didn't give up at all, but the loss we endured was painful. I felt like we played not to lose, and didn't play to win. We were confident going in knowing what we had to do to succeed. Overall, it just ended up being a dogfight one by the team that played the best in the 4th quarter.
This brings me to why I hate losing more than I love winning. Losing the 2nd time around was one of the worst feelings in my athletic career. Losing to me feels like you left regret on the table, like you didn't truly give it your all. This loss hasn't left my mind, and it probably won't for awhile. It's unfortunate that this had to happen, but it's life and we all move on. The idea of that winning is the only option is so important because what else do you play for? Play to win, dominate at all costs, and leave nothing behind. Sadly that was what we didn't do in our last game. This team doesn't enjoy losing, we don't expect too, we expect to win and play at a championship-caliber level, which we did for most of the year. The joy of winning is very fun don't get me wrong, it's something that you don't want to lose ever in your life. As the Oakland Athletics General Manager Billy Beane once said, "You get on base, we win. You don't, we lose. And I hate losing, Chavy. I hate it. I hate losing more than I even wanna win."
