When Losing is OK.

0:30 Timeout:  When Losing is OK.

Don't get me wrong.  I hate losing and I hate losing a game that I should have won even more.  I also believe that losing can have a positive affect on your team.  When you lose a close game, your team will have the natural instinct to feel sorry for themselves, point fingers, and play coulda, shoulda, woulda.  This is natural.

Use this as an opportunity to teach and refocus the team on your goals.  Tell them that losing can be OK under one circumstance.  It is OK, if they learn from the mistakes that they made and improve because of them.  Nobody cares who the best team is during week 1.  It is all about who improves and who gets better.  Tell them this at the end of that hard loss, but don't get into details.  They are not in a mental state to absorb constructive criticism.  Save that for practice the next day.

At the beginning of the next practice, bring it up.  During this conversation, ask the team about what they didn't do well the day before.  They will most likely be 100% accurate.  Do not pass blame to any individuals, but talk about what the team needs to do differently.  Have today's practice focus on those areas, so they have the immediate ability to fix the problems and get better. 

By telling them that it is OK to lose you will eliminate a lot of the finger pointing and feeling sorry for themselves.  By focusing on getting better and improving, you turn the coulda, shoulda, woulda game into a productive activity.