Tailkicker
UKC Forum Member
Registered: Oct 2003
Location: Nicholasville, KY
Posts: 871 |
Sportsmanship. That elusive quality that is inherent in some fortunate individuals and sadly lacking in many others. There is more to being a good sport than congratulating a competitor after they’ve beaten you. No, being a good competitor and practicing good sportsmanship goes much, much deeper than that.
Have you ever stood outside the ring and listened to the chatter of the exhibitors? Have you ever heard someone demean the winner and those that deemed him so? Have you ever been the subject of that conversation? If so, then you know what it’s like to be on the receiving end. If not, you should pay a little more attention, and learn from others’ mistakes.
Here’s a little test to see how good your sportsmanship skills are. When you suffer a tough loss, do you honestly evaluate your competition to determine whether they were capable of beating you? Do you keep disparaging remarks to yourself? Do you think about the rest of the exhibitors that wanted to win as badly as you did? And, most importantly, when you win, do you behave in a normal fashion that is not perceived as gloating? If you answered no to any of these questions, you may need an attitude adjustment.
It’s important to remember that everyone enters competition to win. Anyone who says that they enjoy showing the same, whether they win or lose, is probably, at the least, exaggerating a bit. We all know it’s much more fun to win. But we also must accept that no matter how good our exhibit is it will lose sometime. And this is where you will be judged as a person. People will want to see how you handle the pressure of losing. This will determine how you are perceived and how people treat you when you do win.
Good sportsmanship is about winning, too. How you act when you have won is probably more important than how you act when you have lost. There’s nothing worse than a poor winner. Just because you won doesn’t mean it will happen again. And if you act poorly after you’ve won, odds are it won’t happen again. It is very important to enjoy the victory without offending those you’ve defeated. A gracious winner is as well-received as a gracious loser.
Remember, every person that is at the top of his or her game had to “pay their dues” to get there. Trust me, they’ve all done their fair share of losing. But when they have lost, they have been professional about it. They didn’t berate the judge or assault the exhibitor that won. And believe me when I tell you that losing has taught them how to win.
We have all heard the cliche, “It’s lonely at the top.” Although that is true sometimes, it certainly is not true all of the time. There are many big winning exhibitors that are as popular as can be. These are the people that you feel good for when they win. It doesn’t have to be lonely from that lofty perch. But the determination of how lonely you are up there comes from how you’ve behaved on the way up. I’m referring to sportsmanship again. People will be genuinely happy for you when you finally achieve your goal as long as you didn’t step on their toes while getting there.
T.G.
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09-22-2010 10:22 PM
