Using failure as motivation
Gene Steinmeyer
In 1982, I had a really good girls’ high school basketball team. They had lost a couple of games during the season and we had a tough district tournament. In the semifinals we faced Exeter, who had given my Wilber-Clatonia team one of our earlier losses.
The game was close throughout, with Exeter holding a two-point lead with just seconds remaining. However, we had the ball in frontcourt. During a timeout, I made the easy decision to put the ball in the hands of my 6-foot junior center. Angie was averaging almost 20 points per game and would be a first-team all-state player.
The team ran the play just like I had drawn it up. Angie turned from 10 feet like she had done hundreds of times. She had made that shot hundreds of times, but this time the shot fell short. Our season was over.
Angie could have felt bad about that missed shot that ended our season. I kept telling her she should be proud I trusted her to take that final shot. Angie did the right thing. She used it for motivation.
The next season, Angie led her team to 27 straight wins. In the state tournament’s semifinal round, Angie led her team back from a 10-point deficit. She topped her career off with a 28-point game in the state tournament championship game. She broke all the scoring records at that state tournament. It all started with failure.
Guess who said this: “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that’s why I succeed.”
That is a quote from the greatest basketball player that ever lived, in my opinion. It came from the mouth of the great Michael Jordan. Jordan even made a pile of money doing a commercial about his 26 failures.
You don’t have to go all the way back to the 1980s or 1990s to find redemption in failure. In early November of 2014, Salvador Perez stood at the plate with two out in the ninth inning of the seventh game of the World Series. The pressure doesn’t get any higher than this.
As he stood at the plate, facing the toughest left hand pitcher on the planet, no one was thinking about all those games he had played behind the plate as the Royals’ catcher. No one was thinking about all those foul balls that missed Salvy’s glove, but not his body.
At third base stood Alex Gordon, the Royals’ third baseman. Gordon had just found his way to third base thanks to San Francisco’s misplaying a routine hit. Gordon was the tying run. In the 12th inning of the Wild Card game, Salvy had driven in the winning run. Could he do it again?
Madison Bumgarner, the tough left-handed pitcher for the Giants, threw Salvy a pitch on the fringe of the strike zone. A tired, sore Salvador Perez popped the pitch up in the infield and the Giants had won.
One year later, again Salvy had played more games behind the plate than any other major league catcher. He was just as tired and just as sore as the year before. This time he stood in front a disappointed New York Mets crowd with the World Series Most Valuable Player award. Failure led to success.
Wednesday night, the Maryville boys’ basketball team lost a hard-fought game to Lawson. Maryville trailed most of the game. As the game wound down, the two teams traded haymakers. Twice Lawson would hit two free throws to take a three-point lead. Twice coach Matt Stoecklein called on John Zimmerman to bring the Spoofhounds back. Twice John had charged through the Lawson defense to score on driving layups.
Finally, Lawson missed a free throw and Maryville had a chance to tie. There were just 14 seconds left, and again Stoecklein called on Zimmerman. It was the right call. John did what only John could do, getting to the basket. Under pressure from the Lawson defense, the shot fell just short. A follow by Jackson Golightly fell short, too. Game and season were over for the Spoofhounds.
Both John Zimmerman and Jackson Golightly will return to lead the Spoofhounds. They should be proud their coach trusted them to take the final shots. They should also use it not as a source of failure, but as a source of motivation. It could be a great season next year.
