Hats off to this 13 year old girl. Seriously, hats off!

[the game]

You don't need to win to have fun!

Is it more fun to lose on purpose like the coach wanted them to do?

[jimboa24]

So they won? Awesome! Good for them.

Back when I was in high school, I asked a member of my high school's volleyball team to the semi-formal dance. She accepted, but first she had a county championship volleyball tournament that was taking place before the dance. Our school's team lost, and the team took it pretty hard (understandably so), but she took it harder than anyone.

She still went to the dance with me, but she was an hour late, had obviously been crying, and wasn't much fun. It was obvious that she only showed because she thought that standing me up would be a shitty thing to do. She mostly hung out with her teammates at the dance and it was a huge drag. She did apologize, and I understood, but it still sucked.

IMO, it was pretty shitty scheduling, but whatever.

[Scyclone]

Wow... the level of beta in this thread is astounding. If you are going to compete, in a competition, shoot for the top. It doesn't mean you'll become some incredible champion but you'll have put forth your best efforts with no regrets. Often times, it teaches you more from losing at your best than winning at your worst. You learn your own shortcomings and you have an encouraged inspiration to build upon them for the next time you rise up to the challenge.

For those of you going on about "how it is damaging to lose", well... what have you been doing in your own life, every day of your life. It isn't some unhealthy obsession to want to better yourself, in fact, it is a standard testament to evolution at the heart of its origins. If you do not strive to be something better than you are currently, you fail to evolve, if you fail to evolve long enough, you regress. If you regress, long enough, you die. One can argue that life is meaningless... but what truly holds more meaning, making something of oneself or just accepting inevitability and lying in a hole somewhere.

So, kudos to this girl, she understands that in order to continue forward, you would have to climb some stairs. And in order to even try to climb some stairs, you must believe that you are capable of it.