Have Fun Blog

Congratulations to the Pittsburgh Steelers who won the Super Bowl and became champions of the world for a record tying 5th time.

It must have been great to hoist the Lombardi Trophy as the hapless Seahawks looked on in defeat. What a bunch of losers falling flat on their face like a baby first learning to walk. Of course, they did finish 2nd best - ahead of the other 30 losing teams that didn’t even win their conference. While some may consider the NFC champs to have had a successful season, Tom Seaver once wrote: “there are only two places an athlete can finish - first place and no place”. How about Vince Lombardi who said: “Show me a good loser and I’ll show you a loser”. Even in the world sports, where it really is about winning, or in life, this can’t be the way we think. As a looking glass into real life, when 31 NFL teams, representing the best players in the world, are all looking up at the Champion Steelers, we all need to find and understand the value of losing.

Everybody Loses

While being a loser requires that you lose, the corollary that losing makes you a loser is certainly false. Vince Lombardi is known as one of the greatest and most intense coaches in history. Of course, most of us know Coach Lombardi’s famous quote: “Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing”. While he always put that kind of emphasis on winning, most of us don’t know that he also said: “If you can’t accept losing, you can’t win.” While we all like to win much more than we like to lose, in order to play and be a part of something greater, we have to be willing to take the risk that we might lose. It has to be accepted that losing is a natural a part of participating and of winning.

Why It’s Okay to Lose

While not necessarily intuitive, there are many reasons why we can feel good about losing and I want to focus on two of these: the first and most obvious reason to lose is because it will help us to win; the second reason to lose is that it helps us to win in life.

Losing creates opportunity. Every loss has more lessons about what a team or individual can do to improve than any win. Losing also provides more motivation. Winning tends to cause people to overlook errors in judgment and fundamentals that only losing can reveal. It’s through the process that individuals and teams can discern areas to work on through practice to improve. Maybe even more important is that losing forces people to recognize that they want to win. The motivation provided by losing is a key to helping teams work harder in practice to improve and to play harder to win. Coach John Wooden’s Pyramid of Success (January, 2006) emphasizes that success isn’t winning or losing, but the self satisfaction derived from doing your best to be the best of which you are capable. Both winning and losing should inspire an individual to improve and to maximize their potential. By using losses in this way, we can motivate ourselves and others.

We can also use these lessons to improve other aspects of our life because losing is as much a part of every day life as it is a natural experience of playing sports. As parents, we make such an effort to help our kids feel better and to not let them experience failures. Ultimately, by not acknowledging their shortcomings, mistakes and losses, we don’t allow them to live up to their potential. Failing is natural and it creates motivation. Without failing, kids may not see the need to work harder to improve. Telling kids that they have a “good eye” when the pitch is over the backstop, or saying “nice try” after a mistake may seem encouraging. However, we should also understand that it can be fine to let them know that a mistake has been made. When an error is made we can acknowledge it and then work to learn from the mistake and ultimately to improve.

By continuing to tell kids that they’re always doing great sends a message that they don’t need to work as hard. Kids are smart and they realize when they’re good or bad. Sometimes they need to be protected but other times we need to also be honest if we want them to succeed in life. The idea that a person just needs to do their best isn’t always true - sometimes they need to do even better. I heard of story of an employee who responded to a new work assignment for a project that needed to be done by a deadline with: “I’ll do my best”. Well, in this case, it just needed to get done and failing to finish it, even if that was their “best effort”, was simply unacceptable. Sometimes, a person’s best is not enough and you need to “get it done”. This is one of the lessons that you can learn by losing because it is part of life.

Conclusion

Bud Wilkerson, the famous Okalahoma Sooners football coach who led his team on a 47 game winning streak, noted that the only way you could meet somebody that never lost meant that you had to find somebody that never played the game. While nobody wants to lose, we can use losing to motivate and improve. We can also extrapolate the lessons of losing to the greater life lessons so that we can all become the best of which we are capable. Losing is part of everything we do and has tremendous value. Mistakes are a natural part of participating so we shouldn’t be afraid of acknowledging our errors and using them to improve. Our goal, in youth sports and in life, has to be to see the value of losing and use it to become better athletes, parents and people.

Ken Kaiserman is the President of http://SportsKids.com - a leading sports Internet site for kids and their families. In addition to coaching football, basketball and baseball, Ken serves on the local Little League board of directors and a park advisory committee.

Tags: kid sports bedding, Kids Online Games, Kids Sports Camps & Leagues, kids stuff, sports gearkid sports bedding, Kids Online Games, Kids Sports Camps & Leagues, kids stuff, sports gear

Share This

Coyote hunting is quickly becoming a popular pastime for hunters all across North America largely due to the sheer excitement it has to offer. There are few things that can get my adrenaline flowing faster than seeing a coyote rapidly closing on my position in response to the desperate pleas of my distress call. My goal here is to provide you with some basic strategies that can quickly get you up to speed on the basics of coyote calling, and help you experience the joy of calling coyotes. The tips and strategies I will discuss will be listed in order of importance to your success at calling coyotes.

The first and most important item that is crucial to your success at calling coyotes is scouting. It is a simple fact that you can’t call a coyote if there isn’t one there to be called. When you’re out in the field scouting look for scat and coyote tracks that will indicate coyotes are in the area. Also, take notes on where you repeatedly see coyotes, as these will be areas that you will want to target with your calling. Landowners are great resources to give you hints on where they are seeing coyotes on their land and where they feel would be good places to call. Look for areas that have a high concentration of the coyote’s prey, such as rabbits, prairie dogs, deer, and mice. If you seek out these types of areas, you’re sure to find coyotes.

Second in line for success at calling coyotes is set-up. How you set-up (position yourself) on stand to call is critical. Pay close attention to the direction of the wind at all times. The coyote’s sense of smell is highly adapted, and should not be ignored. When setting up, make sure you position yourself either with the wind directly in your face or with a crosswind. Coyotes are notorious for circling downwind to gain scent advantage, so the ideal set-up in my opinion would be with a crosswind and sufficient open area downwind to see any circling coyotes. It helps if you can hunt with a friend, and position him/her downwind to get any coyotes that circle your position. If you have one of the new remote controlled digital callers on the market, you can position the call upwind of your position and therefore be in the perfect position, as the coyote begins to circle. Just don’t position it to far away in case the coyote does decide to come directly into the position of the caller. It is also important to call with the sun at your back. This makes it more difficult for the coyote to see you, as they have to look directly into the sun when they approach. Another important aspect for setting up is to try and position yourself in the shade. By being in the shade, this will help conceal your position and make it more difficult for the coyote to see you. Now, putting all these items together would certainly be the perfect scenario, but in reality this isn’t always possible. Sometimes you have to sacrifice the position of the sun or your ability to sit in the shade in order to call a prime location. However, I never sacrifice wind direction in order to call an area. If the wind isn’t right, I wait to call that area another day.

The third item for successful coyote calling is camouflage. It is important to try and blend into your surroundings by matching your camouflage to the terrain you hunt. It is also critical to cover all exposed skin, including your face. Human skin is highly reflective and coyotes will pick up on this. Test this out for yourself by having a friend dress in full camouflage except for a face mask, and then have him conceal himself as if he were hunting. Now, step back several yards and see how easily he is to pick out. Now try the same experiment with your friend wearing a facemask. I bet you will be surprised at the difference. Another important component of camouflaging yourself is to limit movement when on stand. Coyotes have keen eyesight and will pick up on the slightest movement. If you must move, do so slow and deliberately.

Last but certainly not least, is the actual act of calling itself. Many of you may be surprised that I saved this for last. Don’t get me wrong, making the right sound is very important and you could be producing the most mournful distressed rabbit sound the coyote has ever heard, but unless you do all the above items correctly your chance of bagging it are greatly reduced. Learning how to use a mouth blown rabbit in distress call is a relatively simple task. Any of the calls on the market today are likely to work for you. If you don’t know the correct sound to make, I suggest buying one of the many videos on coyote calling that are on the market or buy a CD or cassette tape with a live rabbit in distress sound on it and practice along with it. Many beginners make the mistake of thinking they have to sound perfect in order to call a coyote. The truth of the matter is the coyote doesn’t care. As long as you sound like an animal in distress, you’re likely to get the attention of a coyote. The interesting thing about calling coyotes is that no two people sound exactly alike when using a particular call, but the sounds are all effective, and yours likely will be too. One other topic that hasn’t been mentioned is how long to call at each location. This depends on a lot of factors, but I typically stay 30 minutes on each stand, especially when calling open area. If you live in an area that is heavily wooded, you may only stay on stand 10-15 minutes because the sound won’t travel as far. When you are calling you will want to call for short intervals. For example, call for 20-30 seconds, wait 2 minutes, and repeat. Do this for the duration your on the stand.

These are the basics you will need to become a successful coyote caller. Study them closely and then get out in the field and call some coyotes. Once you do, I am sure you will be hooked for life just as I am. I wish you the best of luck.

Mark Petersen is an avid hunter and has been hunting coyotes successfully for over 10 years. If you enjoyed this article on coyote hunting and would like to learn more about it, please visit http://www.thehuntingdirectory.com There you will not only find more information on coyote hunting, but will also experience a complete directory of hunting related information and resources on nearly all types of hunting.

Tags: coyote, coyote calling, coyote hunting, hunting, outdoors, predator, predator calling, sportcoyote, coyote calling, coyote hunting, hunting, outdoors, predator, predator calling, sport

Share This

Shaun White known for his big air moves, has a natural finesse for making his cab 7’s and frontside 900’s look easy. It was his huge amplitude on the powder that not only helped him into the pro ciruit, but also got him sponsored by burton at the age of 13. Despite what many people must think after what happened during this winter’s X game competition, Shaun White is a classic boarder with a style all his own. WX 2005 was his comeback after a painful 5 months of rehab due to a Torn ACL took him out of last season’s superpipe.

Shaun, or The Flying Tomato as he is sometimes called by fans, opened up his runs with a series of 900’s and 720’s but most of his competition threw out 1080’s at the beginning of their run, and in the end, risk is what get’s the points. But Shaun White isn’t discouraged. With the Summer X games coming up next, and several Snowboarding and Skateboarding competitions in between, he’s going to be too busy carving up that snow and street to bother worrying about the past. One of the main reasons Shaun does so well in contests is because he’s calm and doesn’t worry about the pressure, he goes out there and has fun, and that’s his secret to winning! Well that and some grid-iron practicing, he knows how to have a good time, and get the job done without letting the pressure get to him, in fact, I don’t Shaun even knows how to worry!

My bet is by the end of February, he’s going to be top tomato and WX will be a minor blip on his radar. Shaun White is a veteran boarder at the age of 18, a ripping Skater and a pretty good guitarist too. With a unique attitude all his own, you can bet The Flying Tomato will be flying for many more years to come!

Andi Smith, a 17 year old Snowboarder, Skateboarder and Surfer has been participating in extreme sports since she was 4. Having just graduated from high school during the first semester of her senior in Dec. 2004,Andi, the oldest of 5 children, offers monthly articles on Extreme Sports, and Extreme Sports Athletes like Shaun White,Dustin Miller,Antti Autti,Tony hawk and the like.

Tags: extreme, Money, Shaun White., skateboarding, snowboarding, sport, Success, surfing, Xgamesextreme, Money, Shaun White., skateboarding, snowboarding, sport, Success, surfing, Xgames

Share This