Dayton Diary: Lessons from losing

I was a freshman in 2003 on the women’s basketball team under a newly hired head coach. Some players had left the team; some were injured. We played many games with seven or eight players. We won three.

What was the point?

Now I see what I couldn’t then.

Before UD, I had spent hundreds of hours working on my skills. I began freshman year with workouts, weightlifting, adjusting to classes and being away from home. I was excited.

I didn’t see the 25-loss season coming.

My confidence was shaken. My thoughts about my abilities affected my feelings, my actions, my results on the court.

I didn’t know I could influence the thoughts in my head and my reaction to them. I identified as a basketball player. That’s who I was and what I did. I thought I had failed at basketball; I felt I was a failure. But we are all more than what we do. We all have gifts to share that can’t be contained within titles like basketball player, student, professional, parent.

Through the next three years, the team improved, but we never breached the 20-win mark. The season after I graduated, the team won 25.

At the time, I couldn’t see my role in that season.

Now I can. I helped recruit the eight seniors on the 25-win team. I pushed them in practice. I led them with my heart. I did the same with the juniors and sophomores of that 25-win season, who continued the winning the next year, and the next year, and the next.

My 20-year perspective has helped me better understand my place in the process of building a college basketball program. 

I also now see that life is a process and wherever I am is where I’m meant to learn from and live fully.