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It's All About Winning

03/05/2016, 12:30pm CST
By Dan Bauer

Addictive effects of winning are painfully visible

It wasn’t always like this.

This insatiable appetite to win has long been a part of the professional sports culture. Evidence of the grip it has on players, coaches and even fans is embarrassingly on display every season. From performance enhancing drugs, to Spy-gate, to Inflate-gate, to acts of physical violence strictly intended to maim players, to the abhorrent behavior of fans, the addictive effects of winning at any cost are painfully visible.

Sadly this uncontrollable craving to win has now firmly attached itself to the backbone of the high school experience. Efforts to convince us otherwise are mere talking points used to distract us from the reality. As a writer I am quite fond of the written word, but understand it has no more value than cheap talk if it is not backed up by actions.

Nothing is more confusing than giving good advice and then setting a bad example.

School administrations will say all the right things about the value of athletics, but their actions often tell a different story. Coaches are consistently let go and hired based primarily on their win-loss records, players transfer between schools for athletic opportunity and rules are contorted, grades manipulated and rugs pulled over player misconduct to keep them playing.

As a coach on the inside for the past four decades I can assure you that these accusations are neither fabricated nor exaggerated. They are sadly a part of our educational system. Put these symptoms on a national stage and they don’t look much different than pros.

Vince Lombardi’s misquoted phrase “Winning isn’t everything it is the only thing,” may have been born in the sixties, but it has now become a way of life for too many starry eyed parents. The “whatever is best for my child” selfishness is seamlessly ingrained. It is a conviction that is primarily parent taught, because quality coaches know that selfish teams have little chance to experience any definition of success.

High school coaches and athletic directors are the ultimate stewards of their athletic programs. They bear the responsibility to operate teams within the parameters of the educational process. When poor decisions are made and athlete’s misconducts are hidden or rationalized away it is the need to win that drives those decisions. Perhaps it is time for the WIAA to implement a character based coaching education program to remind all of us what this athletic experience is really all about. I know someone who could head that up.

One of the most damaging ways this win at any cost mentality manifests itself is the transfer of players to rival schools to assure a winning experience. This Pandora’s Box we call open enrollment has predictably become more about sports than academics. Those who claimed they did not see this train wreck coming were either completely naïve or ignorant. It is perpetuating the dominance of perennial powers and in effect turning them into “unofficial” co-ops while crippling the existence of long standing rival programs. Super teams, some legitimate co-ops, some not, are emerging in each area of the state at the expense of the programs around them. Open enrollment has effectively turned February, March and April into an amateur free-agency period.

Recruiting allegations against coaches are meaningless because winning programs recruit themselves. Coaches don’t need to do the leg work; they just need to let it happen. What coach, feeling the pressure to win, will discourage a great athlete from joining their team?

These player movements are another truth that nobody really wants to talk about. It is filled with the type of raw emotion that cannot generate levelheaded debate. Parents of displaced players are put in a no win situation because speaking up paints them as not supportive of the team. It is an ugly situation driven by the greedy desire to win. Painting it as an innocent attempt for “better” players to play with “better” players is another semantics lesson aimed at disguising the truth.

The interesting part of this dance is the WIAA’s admission that school districts have the option of drawing up “local regulations that provide for non-varsity status for one year in a transfer situation.” Schools also have the option to not allow open enrollment. However, a district adopting such a policy would be in effect discouraging player movement and likely decreasing their odds of a “winning” season. So the truth is if schools really wanted to make a statement about this practice they could.

But they like to win, so they don’t. And that is the message they send, winning is paramount. Spin it anyway you want, but that is the truth of the matter.

I can’t help but believe that in our pursuit of the winning experience we have lost sight of the real purpose of high school athletics. This winning spell we fall under reduces the athletic journey we wax so prophetically about to a number we put under the W-column and three day vacation from school to attend the state tournament. Anything less is seen by too many as failure. Like the most addictive drugs, winning, when prioritized above everything else dictates our every decision. It causes us to do irrational things that cannot be defended when we lose, but will gladly be ignored if we win.

Winning, you see, doesn’t cure a team’s problems, it just covers them up. The magic carpet of winning has no limits to what truths it can disguise. It also insulates coaches from criticism of their methods, some which are unquestionably outside the rules.

Loyalty, once a hallmark of the athletic culture, one of the building blocks of John Wooden’s famed pyramid, has all but disappeared. It has been replaced at the professional level by making more money and in the high schools by more winning. As a Rice Lake Warrior back in the seventies, I would have quit the game before I would have played for our rival Hayward.

Times have changed and while the off season friendships kindled in AAA teams has improved camaraderie it is also the breeding ground for open enrollment plans to find the best team. Gone along with loyalty seems to be the desire to build successful programs from the ground up. Patience and pride have been replaced by shortcuts and shortsightedness. We want to win now.

For twenty-two years I was WIAA boys head coach and never made it to the state tournament once. In three years as an assistant on the girl’s side I have gone each year. Outside of playing one more game and the extra events linked to the state tournament, I can’t honestly say those state tournament teams got more out of their seasons. Each season is truly about the four month journey we call the regular season and the excitement brought on by the playoffs. My win-loss record never had any impact on the real lessons I wanted my players to learn from the athletic experience.

Striving to win is certainly the goal when we turn on the scoreboard, but not winning at any cost. There is a stark difference. One focuses on the process and the life lessons taught along the way, the other focuses only on the end result and any means that will achieve it.

Truth number four; when we reduce high school athletics to numbers on a scoreboard we behave no better than the paid professionals who make their living from winning. The win at any cost graffiti that stains pro sports has slowly and sadly made its way to prep sports arena.

And that is the truth that hurts the most.

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