The Prompt:
A well-known football coach once said, “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.” Do you agree or disagree with this statement? Write an essay in which you state your position and support it with convincing reasons. The Model Essay:
The Sport in Losing
The buzzer sounded, and the opposing team began to cheer. A young girl stood behind the serving line, volleyball still in hand, and allowed her anger to swell. Her team had just lost—and by almost ten points. She had tried to save the day as she stepped to the serving line and, with under a minute to go, began pounding her terrifying underhands. It was a futile attempt, though. She had managed to gain her team only a few points before the game ended. She had failed. The anger became too much to bear. She spiked the ball onto the ground with all her strength and stormed away to face the other losers on her team.
This game was not a playoff or a tournament game. It was not high school, college, or professional level. It was an eighth-grade regularseason game. And this girl was not one with a history of violence or even a violent nature. I was this angry athlete, and like so many others in our society, I was infatuated with winning, caught up in believing Vince Lombardi’s famous claim that “winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.” If this is true, I fear for the state of our athletes. Allowing them to seek winning and only winning will cause them to miss what is truly important in the game and in life.
The Term Paper on Winning Team People Employees Work
Motivation in the Workforce Managing employees is cited as being the biggest problem to small business owners. This is because employers very often don't know how to handle employees. Effectively managing employees is a skill acquired through training and practice. Many books have been written on the subject, and courses are regularly offered through educational institutions. Motivation theories ...
At some point in their lives, all athletes have played for the pure joy of the game. Even if it was just for a brief time in childhood, playing outside before dark, they were not playing to find out who was the best. Eventually, however, the idea of winning took over, with coaches pushing too hard from the sidelines and parents goading from the stands. Perhaps they overlooked these famous words: “It’s just a game.”
Children should Introduction
Attention-getting opener:
Personal anecdote
Position statement
Body—Point 1
not have to worry about a coach’s reaction to a bad call, a parent’s reaction to a lost game. Professional athletes should not have to consider tomorrow’s headline before they step onto the court. The game needs to be fun again—the emphasis on winning de-emphasized.
When athletes seek only victory, they often fail to reap any of the values the game may teach them or to acknowledge the benefits of losing. Athletic competition has more to offer than the glory that comes with a winning season. Think of the benefits we gain from being part of a team or from working alone to do our best—win or lose. Sports emphasize qualities such as loyalty, perseverance, friendship, solidarity, and peace. In addition to these psychological benefits, sports also have obvious physical benefits.
The constant activity serves as great exercise, with multiple health benefits, regardless of the score. Although athletes do enjoy the positive energy obtained from winning, they should also recognize that there is something to be gained from losing. If all you ever do is win, it becomes harder to pinpoint your faults. Teams and individuals that frequently lose know what they need to develop in order to win. Also, if you never lose, how can you have compassion toward your opponents? Seasoned losers can understand how it feels to lose and can act appropriately when they win.
A common misconception about winning is that it is what you must do to have an impact on the game. Sometimes, though, it just takes a little class. Robert Johnson, one of the best basketball players our school has known, exemplifies this kind of sportsmanship. In one of last year’s final games, Robert fouled out—but on questionable calls from the referee. Not once did he express hostility toward the ref, even though he and his teammates were in danger of losing an important game. Finally, when the whistle blew for his fifth foul, Robert approached the official. Fans thought that at last he would give vent to his frustration. But not Robert; he reached out to shake hands with the man who had made the calls against him. Olympic figure skater Michelle Kwan is famous for this kind Point 2
The Review on Electronic Games and Entertainment
As early as 2600 BC, games are universal part of human experience and present in all countries as part their cultures. Games are usually for enjoyment, leisure, and sometimes used as educational tool. Key components of games are goals, rules, challenge, and interaction. Games generally involve mental and physical stimulation, and often both. Games can take a variety of forms, from competitive ...
To those who continue to believe that winning is the only thing, I ask, what is winning? Is it just being on the team with more points on the scoreboard at the end of the game? And when you use the term “only thing,” are you saying that winning is a priority over one’s faith, family, education, country, life, and happiness? Under these terms, I think anyone would agree, winning is not the only thing. Winning gives one a positive, empowering feeling. But it also can bring out the worst in people, as it did in me, a relatively calm person turned irrational at the loss of a minor volleyball game. We must not exaggerate the importance of winning, nor should we undermine the value of losing
