A pep talk for youth athletes

“A good coach can change a GAME. A great coach can change a LIFE.”

— John Wooden

I entered my sporting life at the age of 10 when I crossed the street to see what all the activity was at the public swimming pool.

I was what some described as a pool rat, spending each afternoon with friends doing deep dives and jumps off the boards and sides of the pool.

Since it was early morning, the pool wasn’t open to the public, but nonetheless there were kids swimming laps and taking instructions from the lifeguards.

Knowing me well since I spent many hours each afternoon at the pool, one guard asked if I wanted to join them. I went home to ask my mom if I could try out for the swim team. That was the beginning of my competitive career, which lasted until I was a sophomore in college.

Which led to my professional career as a youth swimming coach while I was in college, as a newspaper reporter writing about college swimming, as a college sports information director, as the founder of a non-profit addressing issues in youth sports, and now a grandparent watching my grandsons play competitive sports.

Needless to say, I have interacted with and watched a lot of coaches at all levels of sports.

The fact that there are a lot of positive things kids can take from participating in sports is not a surprise. A lot of the responsibility of making the experience positive is placed on the coaches’ shoulders. It’s not just about the Xs and Os.

If coaching is done correctly, kids can learn lessons that will carry them through their lifetimes. Lessons learned not just after a game, but each day — before practice, after practice, before a game, in the locker room, in the preseason meeting and at the postseason banquet.

At the end of the day, or the end of my career, I would tell my athletes “I will always believe in you and am so grateful to have had the opportunity to coach you. Remember that all the principles surrounding your athletic careers can be applied to your professional careers and personal interactions for the long term.”

You won’t always win in life. Losing is only a failure if you fail to do anything about it. Never accuse anyone for your loss, give people surrounding you credit for the victories, and tell them you will do a better job in helping them in the future.

What allows you to keep your head high and failing in whatever you attempt is learning from the mistake and working hard.

It’s OK to fail because if you’re not failing, you’re not learning. How you recover from setbacks reveals your true character and anything worth having requires hard work.

Perseverance allows you to continue trying to do something even though it is difficult. Find that lesson in each setback and the tenacity to persevere even when the task is challenging and at times unrewarding.

Coach Bill Courtney in the Oscar-winning documentary “Undefeated” reminds his players “the measure of a man’s (or woman’s) character is not determined by how he handles his wins, but how he handles his failures.”

Think back to one of your disappointing losses. I hope you learned more from that one loss than all the wins together.

Most teams and athletes end up as non-winners. Only one team or one athlete can win. Thus, sports — and life — must be about the process, the journey and not about the objective of winning.

Tennis star Martina Navratilova once said “the moment of victory is much too short to live for that and nothing else.”

To the victor go SOME of the spoils, but not all of them. The winner can think back on the game and still find areas to improve upon because the perfect game does not exist. The loser can look upon the process and allow the character building to run its course.

Former NFL wide receiver Michael Irvin, in addressing his past mistakes, said, “Look up, get up and don’t ever give up. You tell everyone or anyone that has ever doubted, thought they did not measure up, or wanted to quit. You tell them to look up, get up and don’t ever give up.”

Good luck.

Nancy Justis is a former competitive swimmer and college sports information director. She is a partner with Justis Creative Communications and Outlier Creative Solutions and the founder of Iowa Youth Sports Initiative. Contact her at njustis@cfu.net.