BEHIND THE CLIPBOARD: Embrace The Process, Not Expectations

   Our football team hasn’t been that good recently, but this year, we’re going to shock the world. We’ve had a great offseason, our new coaches are super and we’ve all made it our goal to win the league. No one thinks we can do it and people tell me not to get my hopes too high. They talk about the other good teams in the league, and what’s wrong with our team instead of what’s right. Why are people so negative?  

C.C., Santa Rosa 

   Good question — there’s a lot of negativity out there in the world, and it’s not limited to how good a high school football team is going to be. It’s human nature, because there are only two ways to move up the ladder: the first and best is to improve yourself; the default, too often, is to try to drag others down below you.

   So by putting down your team and your school, some people are indirectly building up their own team and their own school. If you’re worse, then they’re better, or so they think. (You see that kind of talk on social media all the time.)

   On the other hand, though, it’s important not to lose touch with reality. If you think you’re going to win league — or get a date with the cutest girl in the school, or earn an academic scholarship to Stanford — and that’s your expectation, then there’s a pretty good chance you will be disappointed.

   For example, if you’re focused on winning league as your goal, and you work really hard — and so does everyone on your team — and things go wrong and you wind up finishing sixth, you might start thinking that working hard doesn’t pay off and isn’t important. After all, you worked really hard getting ready for the season, and during the season, and the outcome wasn’t what you were hoping for, so why work hard in the future?

   And remember that most of the other teams in the league are working really hard too. Almost every coach in every sport will tell his team “We’re going to be the best conditioned team in the league, and when they get tired, we’ll be fresh.”

   But what happens if you play a team that has worked just as hard, has just as good a coaching staff, but simply has bigger, better football players? The odds are that you’re going to lose — but that doesn’t mean all the work you put in, and all the effort you made to make you and your teammates better is wasted. What it means is that the outcome is less important than the process, and that believing that winning is the only way to validate what you’ve done is a mistake.

   So some of those people who doubt how good your team will be aren’t really being negative. They’re just trying to help you understand what really matters, and what really matters isn’t the final score or the final standings. What really matters is what you’ve learned about yourself and teamwork and commitment, and all the lessons coaches tell you are the important things about sports.

   Of course, you can learn all those lessons and win a lot of games too – and maybe even a league title. That’s definitely the most fun, especially when you talk to the doubters at the end of the season. So keep working hard, and good things can happen. Just don’t let your expectations get in the way of getting the most out of the season, no matter how many games you win.

   Clay Kallam is an assistant athletic director and girls varsity basketball coach at Bentley High in Lafayette. To submit a question for Behind the Clipboard, email him at [email protected].