Psychology of Losing
Yesterday my football team lost to a winless team. We lost on a last second “hail Mary” pass that only occurred because they made a bad snap on an attempted fieldgoal.
Anyways, everyone acts differently in this situation. In the change-room after the game, one guy was yelling loudly in anger saying that he was sick and tired of playing on a team with people that don’t give it their all, he was claiming that he was one of the only people that actually had the passion and gave the effort to win – although he didn’t specifically call out any individual players. Another guy was reminding us that every team makes the playoffs in this league so we are still in contention for the championship no matter what has happened. Some guys just claimed it was all bad luck, others blamed the offense for not scoring enough points and giving too many turnovers.
For myself, I was feeling very disappointed that we lost to such an inferior team, I felt like I played very well myself, but at the same time, I realize that this is just a football game that is really not that important in the context of my life. So, it’s a balancing act between the disappointment of losing and the simple enjoyment of playing the game.
It will be interesting to see how the players react in practice next week. We have 2 more regular season games, next week against another winless team, and the last game against the league leading team.
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