Teamwork: How Losing 66 to -1 Won't Go Away

Winning is a team sport.  Losing is a team sport.  I prefer winning.

When we moved to Summerville from Fort Worth, Texas in 1993 I was pleasantly surprised and delighted to learn that our home was about 32 miles to Folly Beach and Summerville High School had a powerhouse football team and even had a wrestling team.  The wrestling team part was the biggest surprise since I had assumed that it was more of a northern sport with so many of the great wrestling states located up north and in the north central part of the USA.  Those states would include (very partial list) Pennsylvania, Nebraska, Iowa, and just for fun Oklahoma from the southwest part of the country.

Somewhere in the mid to late 1970’s I was a part of the Upper Merion recreational wrestling league.  It was more serious than recreational since many of us wrestled in the AAU (Amateur Athletic Union) junior Olympics.  It was serious fun and serious work.  Just ask some of my buddies who wrestled with our very serious “win at all costs coach” Dale Irwin!  Anyway, one weekend our group traveled to Phillipsburg, NJ where our team lost 66 to -1!  I kid you not.  That score means that most of our team got pinned (not good) and then our coach was given a technical for acting up and henceforth the -1.  It was rather humiliating and Phillipsburg was just that good, extremely good.  I guess I should have added New Jersey to the list above. 

Team scoring in wrestling is a cumulative matter.  There are about 12 matches and every match produces a winner and a score.  I think a “pin” gets one team 6 points and then lesser for points for win or winning by a great amount.  For example winning 12-1 can get a team an extra point.  It’s cumulative and one’s own match and outcome ultimately affects the team.  Isn’t that true in life too?  It’s true for work, family, neighborhoods, cities and countries.  Small wins do matter.  Small wins lead to big wins and team wins.  Losing 66 to -1 was epic.  I can’t remember a personal sports event where my team lost so badly.   Losing like winning can be cumulative as well.  Our individual performances matter.  Winning and losing are team outcomes and determined by our individual performance.  I prefer winning and I imagine you do too.  Let us always remember that our individual performance does matter.  Winning is truly a team sport.  

Still Learning from a Missed Opportunity from 1989

I had the privilege of working with Dr. Paul Broyles who was a Baptist minister who was trained and schooled at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky during its days of academic height and stature in the middle to late 1960’s.  In 1988 he was the pastor of a new Baptist church plant, Southern Baptist, in the suburbs of Philadelphia (West Chester).  The church met at The New Century Club which was the Women’s Club that started the first free kindergarten in 1899 in West Chester.  The church, Emmanuel Baptist, would eventually be the place of my ordination to ministry and so it holds a special place in my heart.  

Dr. Broyles invited this young, 25 year old, new missionary and minister in training to learn the art and craft of interpreting scripture and writing and delivering a good sermon.  Paul was a thoughtful, moderate, very well educated Baptist minister but not even those credentials would push me over the edge to accept his invitation to learn from a proven preacher, a gifted minister, and a fine gentleman.  I was too interested in learning the crafts on my own--the hard way, trial and error.  I wish I would have taken him up on his offer to help me learn the craft.  I really missed a golden opportunity to learn from him but maybe I learned an even greater lesson than I first imagined.  I learned the lesson that learning from others is a give and take process.  It’s a matter of opening oneself and being willing to learn and grow.  That’s a hard lesson for 25 year old who is sold on the idea of “pulling himself up by his own bootstraps.”  

Looking back some 28 years, now, I can see that I was doing the best I could.  I was more interested in my own learning than learning from others.  Even today I have not forgotten that missed opportunity.  I still have fond thoughts of Dr. Broyles and his patient, kind, and gracious approach to Christian ministry.  Missed opportunities are sometimes life’s greatest lessons.