Success

Problems, comments or questions about this site? Please email us at webmaster (at) coachjerry (dot) com	Winning vs. Success By Jerry Norton
	The coach of a youth sports team needs to have a definition of success that is not predicated solely on winning a game or having a winning season. Players and coaches alike should understand that participation, performance, effort and improvement count as much if not more than the final score of any game.
	The old expression “It’s not whether you win or lose but how you played the game” is much preferred over the more modern Vince Lombardi adage that “Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing.” Unfortunately, children today are learning that success equates to winning and failure to losing. We glorify winners with trophies, plaques and parades and ignore, even vilify losers, but when winning becomes the only objective of youth sports, other very important values and objectives are lost or compromised.
	In youth sports, “striving to win” is a fundamental element of the competitive process and in striving to win, an individual athlete should strive to perform the very best he or she possibly can. The task for the youth coach is to help young athletes develop skills and to perform those skills to the best of their individual abilities. By teaching players that good performance and maximum effort equate to success while poor performance and a lack of effort lead to failure, the players’ motivation can be enhanced and success is within the reach of all players and coaches.
	Encouragement and effective goal setting are the coach’s key tools in this pursuit. The coach must work closely with each player to set specific behavior-oriented goals. These should be obtainable but challenging, individual performance goals, goals which view success in terms of surpassing one’s own performance standards rather than exceeding the performance of others. In this way all players, the skilled and the less-skilled continue working to improve performance and can measure their current skill level relative to their previous performance.
	The goals and the player’s progress in achieving them ultimately provide a measure of each player’s effort and improvement. Thus, a successful performance, which is not dependent on the score of a game, is within the reach of every player.
	When winning is defined in terms of effort rather than outcome, all participants in a competition will have the opportunity to be hailed as winners, not just the fortunate fifty percent who come out on the right end of the game score.

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