a quitter never wins and a winner never quits

I honestly can’t even remember all of the jobs I worked at during high school in addition to playing sports. It’s yet another piece of the very real argument that America is losing the right to claim it is the greatest country in the world. It just doesn’t sit well with me when a conscious decision is made to not be involved. Volunteer to help the VFW or the American Legion. Heck, with enough gumption and industriousness, you could be the founding president of your own afterschool club for heaven’s sake. You don’t have to be voted The Athlete of the Year to tie on a pair of football cleats or run 2.8 miles through the woods. Imagine filling out a college application and having nothing to write down. It doesn’t have to necessarily be sports, but in a day and age when schools are teeming with opportunities to excel, it’s shameful anyone in a position of authority isn’t corralling kids by the car load to do something other than nothing.ĭoing nothing is still a choice and it’s not a good one.

In my mind, there should be no need for afterschool buses because every kid should be involved in something that will help affirm or give or create their self-esteem. It really doesn’t matter what it is as long as it’s something. If it were up to me, every last student in every school would sign up for something, anything. I’ve taken it to mean – for me – that second chances simply do not grow on trees. No words could ever be more true, no philosophy more poignantly clear. My high school football coach had a Vince Lombardi quote pasted above his office door and it is emblazoned in my mind as if it were 1984 all over again: “A quitter never wins and a winner never quits.” The late, great NFL Hall of Famer Vince Lombardi could not have stated it better. To KNOW you can do something and will your body to make it happen… There’s a vast difference between that feeling and the feeling of being able to envision glory and simply not have the synaptic impulses to pull it off. I’m not sure why there seems to be a recurring pattern these days that young athletes who have already tasted some form of what it means to succeed on the playing field are “okay” with abandoning the possibility of more success while still in their prime.Īsk any middle-aged man or woman who once felt what it was like to hammer a field hockey ball into the back of the net or spike a volleyball for a match-winning point or barrel their way into the end zone on Thanksgiving Day if they’d trade one day of old, aching bones and muscles to feel the exhilaration of competition even for one hour again in the physique they once possessed. You never get to be 16- or 17- or 18-years-old again. The one thing I always tell my players – after nearly three decades of coaching teenagers – is that you only get to be young once. There is no worse feeling in life than looking back with regret.