In life, there are very few constants that can be found all the way through life. Between youth sports leagues, high school class rankings, working for internships, and vying for promotions at work, however, we can see that competition is something that comes up regularly throughout many different areas of life. For something so integral there still exist some common misconceptions about attitudes when you’re very competitive. One that very rarely seems to get attention is that of the “sore loser”.
When you talk about a sore loser, it’s very easy to bring to mind the image of a child getting angry and nasty as a result of a poor performance on a team. That’s often the most common way to define a sore loser, someone who gets pouty and throws a fit as a result of a
poor performance. The thing is that doesn’t apply solely to children and sometimes is thrown around even in professional sports with people who’ve been competing for decades. A great example of this can be Cam Newton’s post-Super Bowl loss press conference after user Bowl 50 or Lionel Messi’s reaction to losing his third major international tournament final at the Copa America Centenario 2016. Maybe, there is something wrong with assigning such a title onto a situation like this. Sore Loser implies that there’s an external anger, towards the team, towards the game for the loss. It’s immature. It’s finding excuses. Maybe there’s a little less cynical way to speak about such a situation. Maybe it’s a result of the very competitive drive that got the person there in the first place.
The very nature of competition means that there has to be a desire for self-improvement on your sport. The idea is to be better than your competition. At the highest level, that doesn’t just stop at your next opponent, that means you want to be better than anyone else playing your game. That’s where the drive to work hard in between games arises. When all that work goes according to plan, and all your intensity is put towards setting up a good performance, anything sub par can be quite disappointing. I speak from the experience of a golfer with big aspirations that almost constantly were not met, but that’s a different story. Those kinds of results are painful and terribly frustrating, and the resulting displays of emotion can often include being snappy and quick to anger. Sound familiar? This is where “Sore Loser” allegations can be flung around quite easily but manage to miss the mark. It’s not like it’s something to said lightly either. It is a challenge to someone’s resolve, someone’s professionalism, and a challenge to their maturity as a person. So what’s the difference? Motive.
Sore Losers tend to show a wanting to shirk responsibility for the result. They see that the issue lies outside of them, be it an issue with officiation, with teammates, or coaching decisions. They search for excuses outside themselves. The disappointed athlete is different. They know they were the problem. Their performance was the one to blame, and that’s what makes them mad. Another key difference of the Sore Loser to the Disappointed Athlete is that their intense emotional energy goes to different uses. The Sore Loser’s inherent energy against their own responsibility means the anger is useless. The anger is useless because it’s being channeled towards things that aren’t going to get anything done and aren’t going to solve the issue. The Disappointed Athlete, however, realizes the issue is within themselves and their anger is aimed differently. Their anger is more aimed toward a renewed wanting to improve and play better than before. This is the key difference between the two.
Competition is found in many different places and understanding how it affects people is something far more important than you’d think at first. It’ll give you a window into the motives people have and what hey really are. Keeping this in mind, it’s important to call things by their proper name after some thought into the situations rather than just name call at first glance. After all, name calling is immature of us, right?
