Winners and Losers

Last night the BYU Men’s Lacrosse team fell in the quarterfinal game to the Michigan Wolverines. 16-11. It was a tough, season ending loss. Our team has been up at 6 am everyday for the whole semester practicing and working out. They have been dedicated and determined. But they couldn’t pull away from 3 time national champions Michigan. We didn’t make it to the title game and we didn’t take it all, but I think we took home much more than a trophy.

Coach Schneck is a great inspirational speaker and he is quite composed. He spoke to the team following the game. Schneck didn’t sugar coat the loss, he expressed our collective disappointment, but he looked forward to next year. This year was good, we had a lot of success, but we can learn even more from our opportunities to grow when we lost important games. Today is a new day and a new season. New teams will be formed, unique from any other time. Nothing good comes from rolling over in defeat and shame, so we pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and take a step into the darkness prepared to work harder and smarter than ever before. That is winning.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. –Theodore Roosevelt