[mathking]

There has been some really good advice so far. So here is my 2¢$@#worth.

First, as my signature says and several posters have noted, you have to break yourself of the mentality of "losing" an award. This year at the Buckeye Regional 2016 won the Chairman's Award. Our Chairman's team (and much of the rest of the team) was disappointed at not winning. They felt (rightly) that our submission and our team were better than last year, when we won. The feedback had uniformly high marks and said there were two teams they were considering and it was a difficult decision. We have gotten that kind of feedback before (thank you 291) and it is always a little frustrating. My job is to make them realize that they did an outstanding job and even making the judges seriously consider us versus 2016 is an accomplishment. I kept asking them "Did you do your best?" Then you should be happy. Keep working hard and we'll be better next year. I do think that Chairman's is an easier award to not win because you get feedback, and that feedback can tell you where to focus.

My philosophy in dealing with not winning has been influenced by running and coaching cross country and track. When I was a senior in high school I was running the 1600 meters and winning the race, but in a slow time. I heard my coach excited yelling "You're on fire Greg." I thought it was strange, as I was running a slow race for me. It turns out he was yelling for a friend, also named Greg, who was in the process of dropping his personal best time from the 5:50s to 5:15. My coach was really excited by his race, and quite appropriately not as excited about mine. He did tell me "Good race" afterward, and immediately said "Look at Greg" so I could watch my friend complete his race. I was lucky enough to go to college and have a cross country coach with the same philosophy. I have always tried to coach like that. Focusing on every individual and the team doing their best. We have a saying on our cross country team "You can't play defense." It means that all you can do is your best. You can't control how well your opponents run.

I have found that if the adults are sufficiently upbeat about the future at the end of any season, most of the students will be too. Our team did not qualify for the Championships this year, and we already have many members of the team focusing on what we can do next year. The hardest group are the seniors. Their disappointment gets magnified by the feeling of this being the end. I have also found that my own disappointment is easier to manage when I stay upbeat and focused on improvement rather than immediate achievement. Coaching of any kind is really hard when you define your own enjoyment and achievement primarily by winning. There are always going to years when you don't have as much talent or when the alliance draws work against you and you don't advance as far as you would like. Only three teams win the championships each year. Only one wins the CCA. "I need to win" might be the kind of philosophy that lands you a coaching job, but it is also likely to make you unhappy a lot of the time.

When my college coach retired, there were national champion former athletes and never ran/swam a varsity race athletes there. While he coached many All Americans, what he most wanted to be remembered for were the women who got to run (he almost single handedly forced small colleges in Ohio to have women's cross country) and the legions of swimmers and runners who developed a love of their sport and a healthy attitude toward competition. I want that to be my legacy when I retire. I can think of nothing better than to have a bunch of engineers and weekend 5K racers telling me thanks for helping me a little bit with figuring out who I want to be.