A Different Kind of Winner

   This is the time of year in high school where championship track meet after track meet occurs in state after state.  Almost none of those raised get national media attention.  Meghan Vogel did... not for winning, but for coming in dead last.
   Vogel knows about competiton and winning.  Early in the meet, she won the state title in the 1600 meter race.  Later, running in the 3200 meter race, she found herself 20 feet from the finish line, when a competitor, Arden McGrath cramped and fell in front of her.  Instead of moving past her fallen competiton, Vogel stopped, helped McGrath to her feet and across the finish line, making sure that McGrath crossed the finish line first.  The pair crossed the finish line in last place, but to a standing ovation. 
Meghan Vogel Video
   The shocking thing to me when I heard this story was not that someone had chosen to value sportsmanship over competiton, compassion over winning; but that the host discussing this actually considered this an example of what is wrong in sports:  that Americans don't value winning any more.  Really? 
   First, consider that Vogel had already won... a state championship no less.  She knows how to compete.  But she also knows how to care.  The problem is not that she did not have a winning attitude; the credit is that she did not have a win-at-all-costs attitude.
   The reality is that in every athletic event, there will be a winner and a loser, athletically speaking.  If winning were only to be measured in who "wins" the athletic competition, then why would a team that is overmatched bother to compete.  A team sensing certain loss could just walk away and never start the game, and in doing so, would lose the overall point of athletic competition. 

  Consider the Central Washinton University softball team.   Sara Tuchlosky hit the game winning home run for Western Oregon Universtiy, but injured herself rounding first and could not round the bases.  If her team helped her, she would be out. She could have stopped at first, had a pinch runner enter the game and hope for the best.  Instead, the players from Central Washington asked the umpire if there were any rule against them helping her around ther bases.  There is not.  They carried their opponent around the bases, stopping for her to touch each base.  They lost a game.  They won an ESPY.  They claimed a moving place in the histroy of sportmanship.  Drive around town and you see a billboard tribute to their act of kindness... thousands of miles away.  Safe to say, the winner of the game would never have appeared on a billboard in Memphis.  Want to call them losers?

   During the 1992 Olympics, British sprinter Derek Redmond pulled up lame as he approached the finish of a dream.  A pulled hamstring would prevent him from finishing the 400 metre sprint.  But Redmond had worked too long and too hard not to cross the finish line.  He continued to hobble in pain for the final lap, a cheering crowd realizing that sometimes you have to look past the finsh line to find all of the winners.  When the pain was becoming too great for Redmond, one man came from the stands onto the track, Jim Redmond, Derek's father.  65,000 cheered as father and son completed a dream together.  Sounds like winning to me.  Sounds like the Olympic Spirit to me.  "Swifter, Higher, Stronger"... the Olympic motto seems to fit.  Apparently the founders of the Olympic games knew moments like this would be the heart of the games, thus not choosing a Ricky-Bobby-esque "If you ain't first, you're last" motto for the games.
   Memphis made an appearnce at this year's Oscars when the film "Undefeated" won for best documentary.  The movie chronicles the rise of the historically anemic Manassas football team after volunteer coach Bill Courtney took over the inner city school.  Six years later, the team won its first playoff game ever.  But if you get the chance to watch the film, ask yourself this question... would the films story be any less of a success had they lost that playoff game?  Would the changed lives still be changed if the game had ended with a different score? 
   If you think the only place to find a winner is on the scoreboard, perhaps you are simply working with a faulty definition of "winning."