Enduring the struggle makes a victory that much sweeter

“It feels good to win,” Derek said as he excitedly jumped up and down after the final buzzer sounded at the Brookstone School stadium on Friday night. He ran up and down the sideline, hugging everyone he saw, caught up in the bliss of a fourth quarter, come-from-behind win. The senior captain has worked his way through a ton of losses and three losing seasons. The taste of victory is definitely a sweet treat. And if you throw in a 51-7 win over Pacelli in a preseason scrimmage, that’s a win streak.

I get it. Winning is much more fun than losing. No one likes to lose, and certainly no one likes to be reminded constantly of his losing streak like a Jordan High football player seems always to be. As an athlete myself, I don’t know if I would have or could have stuck it out for as long as Derek has, enduring hundreds of hours of grueling practice only to come up short, time and time again.

Not a kid like Derek, and not most of the boys on the Jordan sideline Friday night, who spent two hours standing opposite a sideline full of guys who may be, well, used to being on the winning side of life. Derek and his team entered the campus of Brookstone School as the definite underdog — the underrated, often overlooked Red Jackets against the established, well-respected Cougars.

The whole city of Columbus should have been there, not because the game was a thriller or superb, technically sound football. Because it wasn’t. But it was a neat statement about life and society amidst the harsh realities of our world today. Of course, as a public school teacher, I think it’s a good idea to learn something from every experience and to grow into a better person via even ordinary occurrences. Friday night was that kind of night.

I could fill a week’s worth of lesson plans from the experience, but I think the most powerful lesson I learned was from the excitement of a young man who finally experienced a winning streak.

Derek taught me about resilience and how to celebrate when that resilience finally pays off. I watched him celebrate each touchdown as if it was the first he had ever seen. I saw him smack helmets after every first down as if he was playing in a state final. And I watched him welcome a win as if it were the first in his entire high school career. He taught me that anything worth waiting for is, well, worth waiting for.

He enters his senior year as a winner, not a loser. The long-standing losing streak has finally been broken, and I can only imagine the impact stringing two wins together can make on Derek and his teammates. For kids who have become accustomed to losing and conditioned to settle, a winning streak can be life-altering.

If we as a community could grasp the symbolism of a football game like Jordan vs. Brookstone, we would be in such a better place. It’s about sharing wins with others, giving some a breath of wind behind their sails, and playing nice. When the whistle blew, the boys just played a game of football. Boys were being boys, and it was refreshing. For a few hours, we forgot about the swirling world of hate and division around us and watched some boys being boys.

I believe that regardless of backgrounds and zip codes, our children want nothing more than to be able to forget everything else and just play — to toss aside reputations and wins and losses and just be kids — to ignore labels and status and just enjoy the thrill of a game.

Derek is right, it does feel good to win.

This story was originally published August 19, 2017 at 6:44 PM with the headline "Enduring the struggle makes a victory that much sweeter."