Family time ... shocking

This just in: Within 10 minutes, my entire four-person family will be together under the same roof, eating dinner together and then sitting in front of the fireplace on a chilly, rainy night. Not front-page news stuff, but news nonetheless. With a freshman playing high school baseball (read: practices or games every day but Sunday, even when it's raining) and an eighth-grader winding up his school and travel basketball seasons and beginning his spring league baseball season and with Dad coaching all of the eighth-grader's teams, nights like these are rare and therefore special. My boys don't know what to do with themselves when they aren't busy, though nights like these are cherished in our family. Spaghetti and garlic bread for dinner; all four of us settling on the couch in front of the fire for some American Idol; it's the modern version of Leave it to Beaver. Enough writing, it's family time.

Lose games, not perspective

My seventh-and eighth-grade basketball team lost its first game of the year this evening, stinking up the gym in a four-point loss to another local team. We played poorly and uninspired and deserved to lose. As the coach, I didn't push the right buttons or put the right combinations of players on the court and I take the blame. As I was delivering my post-game speech, I reminded the players that sometimes losing can be beneficial. They, of course, looked at me skeptically, as they -- like me and their parents in the stands -- much prefer winning to losing. But players and coaches and parents need to experience the bitter taste of defeat in order to appreciate the sweetness of victory. I reminded my team to remember the way that they felt when the buzzer sounded to end the game and use that for motivation when they practice this week. It's easy to handle winning. It's not so easy to handle losing. If they learn to win with grace and turn the feeling of disappointment after a loss into motivation, then losing now and then has its benefits. We don't get salaries for this or covered by the media or criticized on sports blogs. We play for an hour on Sundays and hope to win as much as we can while having fun in the process. Our success ultimately will be defined by improvement, though judged by our record. The coaches, players and parents can all learn from losing. None of us like it or hope for it, but if we use defeat as a lesson, the perspective gained will be the victory. (photo courtesy of j9sk9s' Photstream at http://www.flickr.com/photos/j9sk9s/4128778346/)