The victors write history, but that does not have to always be the case. For every winning side there is a losing side as well. So why are the thoughts of the defeated men and women rarely heard? Why don’t people often know how it feels to lose the Superbowl, or go an entire season without ever winning a game? What does it feel like not to consistently dominate, but instead to consistently get dominated? While it is important to know what it’s like to win a game or double an opponent’s score, there are two sides to every story, and the loser’s thoughts and feelings are often overlooked by the winner’s.

Over the course of a season, every team begins to develop a win-loss record that lets everybody know how many games they have lost and how many games they have won. If a team ends a season with more losses than wins, it is considered a losing record. However, even when a team ends with a losing record they are not automatically a bad or unsuccessful team. Many factors are involved in deciding whether a team is “bad” or not, so it is important to know that even teams that have lost almost every game are not necessarily bad teams. With that being said, losing frequently does affect the people who comprise the team. Winning is, of course, more fun than losing, so it is hard to go through an entire season where a team seems to be able to do nothing other than lose.

Losing takes a toll on both the players and coaches of the team, but it affects everyone differently. There are those that feel they were successful anyway, those who felt they were not successful at all, and those in the middle. It is crucial to understand all three perspectives because at some point, everyone is at risk of fitting into one of those categories themselves.

Success

Wins are seen as the most important goal for a team to achieve. However, there are those who feel that a team does not need wins to be successful. They feel that, even though a team may be incapable of beating other teams, they can still be a good team overall. One such example is sophomore Maxwell Palmieri. Palmieri played for the District 117 lacrosse team during the 2017 season. Palmieri’s team’s record was 2-14, but he still feels that overall his team was successful.

“I think that for a first year program we did very well.” Palmieri said.

Palmieri felt that even though they lost nearly ninety percent of their games, they were still successful because it was the first lacrosse team that Antioch has ever taken part in. While Palmieri felt that they did well, he still felt the effects of constantly losing.

“When you lose multiple games in a row, everyone starts feeling it and starts getting a little heated. I never want to feel like that again. That’s actually when our coaches helped us out a lot,” Palmieri said. “They would tell us to use all that anger and frustration in a positive way and that’s what we did.”

Palmieri said that the team began to play even harder and put in even more work so that they would never have to experience a similar situation later in life. District 117 lacrosse coach Matthew Larsen felt similarly about his team’s season.

“I am proud of what we accomplished with a young team. It is hard to have two schools come together and do what we accomplished as a first year team. Most first year teams do not win a game nor do they keep games close,” Larsen said. “The group of kids are hard workers and grinders. You do not get the same hard work at other schools in my opinion. I think the hard work these kids brought to each game is the reason we never got blown out.”

What Palmieri and Larsen show is that the truemeasure of success is not how many wins a team finishes with, but how hard they worked for the few wins they managed to get.

Some Success

While Palmieri and Larsen felt that their team was totally successful even without wins, some people do not feel quite as strongly as they did. Others feel that their team was only partially successful. For sophomore Sara Jilly’s freshmen basketball team in the winter season of 2016-17, this was the case.

“In some ways yes, we were successful, because we would all work together as a team,” Jilly said. “We didn’t realize that other teams could have improved over the year so we were always saying that we were going to beat a team and we would end up losing to them.”

Jilly started out by explaining how they were successful, but quickly changed to telling about ways they were unsuccessful. For her team, the key to success was teamwork, but their downfall was underestimating opponents. This led to a record of 6-19, where the total amount of losses more than tripled the total amount of wins. With that being said, Jilly understood that to be a good team they needed to play as a collective unit.

“If we lose, we lose as a team and if we win, we win as a team,” Jilly said. “When we won games I felt proud of both myself and my team.”

Jilly is not the only person who has felt this way about their team. Freshman Luke Gutke recently finished his soccer season, and also felt that his team was only partially successful. They finished with a record of 2-11, but even though their record was poor, Gutke felt that his team did have good moments.

“My team was successful in occasional moments because we beat the other team to the ball, had some skill with dribbling, and passed well.” Gutke said.

Gutke’s team was capable of good play and sometimes showed it, but were also unable to keep up that level of play for the duration of their season. While Gutke and Jilly’s teams had similar seasons, Jilly’s team was very good at working together and Gutke’s was not.

“We barely had any chemistry and we couldn’t get the ball down the field.” Gutke said.

Gutke’s team could not figure out how to use teamwork on the field, and it resulted in only partial success. However, for Jilly’s team, great teamwork was not quite enough to save them from the same partial success that the freshman soccer team faced.

No Success

Even though, Palmieri, Larsen, Jilly and Gutke felt a certain degree of success in their losing seasons, some people do not feel that way at all. Sometimes, people who experience a losing season just simply do not feel successful at all. This is the case for sophomore Brandon Pinto. Pinto’s freshman soccer season was Antioch’s first ever soccer season without a single win. The team finished with a season record of 0-11-1.

“No, I did not feel that we were successful last season,” Pinto said. “The reason is not only because we failed to win a game, but also because we seemed to lack effort at points of the season.”

Failing to win a game was not Pinto’s only reason for not feeling successful, he felt that his team did not try hard enough or put in the effort necessary to turn their season around. Pinto said that he also lacked effort during certain games because he started to go into games expecting a loss which made him not play as hard as he needed to. Looking back at the season, he realized that this was the biggest issue with his team.

“We should not have assumed that our games would immediately go in as a loss,” Pinto said. “It came to the point where going into games we were just laid back.”

Pinto’s team has shown that, as Palmieri and Larsen said, hard work is the true key to athletic success. Without hard work, motivation, and confidence, a team is set up for a disappointing season.