Sports are all about the winners.
The teams, the players, the individuals, the fans of the team that succeeds the most, when the lights are the brightest.
It’s where all the attention, money and coverage is focused – the old saying of “to the victor, goes the spoils” may not be more applicable anywhere in everyday life outside of sports.
Sports overlook the unsuccessful – cameras focus on the winners being carried off the field in a shower of confetti, while the losing team quietly heads to the locker room.
But, losing is equally as pivotal in an athlete’s journey through sports and through life. Loss presents a unique challenge for players – one of maturity, discipline and determination.
Teams of any sport don’t usually go undefeated – losing is a natural and accepted occurrence throughout the majority of the season. But in the postseason, expectations rise, and failure is not an option. Many Marksmen dream of being a champion, immortalized in school history – a star player on a winning team remembered through documentaries, news articles and legendary celebrations.
Kevin Lu ’24 can attest to that. Although he was part of one of those winning teams in 2021 as a sophomore, he was not a true leader of the volleyball team until later in his career.
So, in the fall of 2023, when the team was at its best and tearing through their regular season and SPC competition, then-senior and captain Lu went into the championship game expecting nothing less than to leave with a ring.
“We didn’t lose to anyone at all, except for at the very beginning of the season,” Lu said. “I think that was one of our problems that year. We hadn’t faced any hardship.”
In the final, the red-hot Lions would face an equally talented buzzsaw in the Episcopal High School Knights, where they’d lose in a heartbreaking fifth set by a mere two points.
“Losing, especially that championship game of my senior year, and never bringing that banner home will always be a blemish on my career looking back,” Lu said.
But as the weeks passed and the fall season faded, Lu eventually struggled less and less with the loss. With graduation approaching, Lu focused on the bigger picture of his career, rather than on its highs and lows.
“I’m well over the fact that we didn’t win,” Lu said. “But that’s how I ended my career, with a loss in the championship. And so, as much as it hurt and stung and sucked, taking a step back and reflecting on my whole experience and how much the process has been important to me, how much my teammates and coaches have meant to me, helped me not let one loss I took in my career overshadow all of the good stuff.”
With the Class of 2024 heading to college, the volleyball team’s new leadership, including senior William Morrow, were left trying to diagnose and solve the previous team’s mistakes.
“I think we got a little full of ourselves, and I think that’s what ultimately ended up being part of our loss,” Morrow said. “We were just way too cocky. Going into this year, we went in with an underdog mentality, almost like, ‘look, we’ve got a lot of work to do here.’”
So, the team went back to the drawing board, leaning into the idea that every success had to be earned. They endured a tough start to the season, working through injuries and slowly finding their most successful lineups.
With an important lesson learned and time to prepare, Morrow and the volleyball team achieved what they had previously, and so closely, failed to do – bring home the SPC trophy.
“You have to be able to channel anger into your work and energy for the next year,” Morrow said. “It sucks to lose, but in order to win, you’ve got to lose, because you learn a lot from losing.”
And, they did it in much different fashion than the dominant run that propelled them a year prior. Instead, this team played the most sets possible, taking each match to five sets before ultimately winning each. They won the final set in another nailbiter, by three points.
However, no teams, even ones built on experience, talent and hard work, are guaranteed to win. Similarly to the 2023 volleyball team, the 2024 soccer team found itself mired in high expectations. In the minds of players and fans alike, there was almost no doubt they would make a playoff run.
“Senior year was the year that everything was looking up,” Sussman said. “I knew that that was the team. It was kind of a situation where anything but winning SPC would have been a huge disappointment.”
As the first seed in SPC, the team was set to play St. Stephen’s in the first round. They justified their high seeding by jumping out to a 2-0 by halftime.
But, just a half later, the team had conceded three, and had lost all chance at the SPC title. Sussman, like many members of the team, was struggling.
“At first, it was kind of just shock,” Sussman said. “You’re up two to zero at half time, and 40 minutes later, your career is over.”
But, in SPC soccer play, teams don’t just go home after losing in the main bracket. The Lions still had two more games, with a maximum achievement of fifth place, to fight for.
“But as captains, we had to talk with our coach and ask, ‘How can we take this group who just had their season ended unexpectedly and win two more games?’” Sussman said. “You don’t go home when you lose, you have to go out and play two more days. So what we were grappling with was how to lead them to give it their all and make the most of the next few days. But we did, and we won the next two games.”
In the days and weeks that followed, the team had to come to terms with their loss while also dealing with the retirement of longtime coach Corindo Martin. Sussman began to feel some of the more common negative feelings surrounding loss.
“It was hard. Everything was lining up for us to win. We just made some errors,” Sussman said. “I think it took some time to process, and eventually, Coach told us he was retiring after our third game. I’m pretty sure all the seniors were in tears, if not all the team, just because he’d given so much to us through that program. Soccer was over, but we still had those relationships with each other that transcend any winning or losing.”
Despite his team’s failure to bring home an SPC championship, Sussman was able to channel his anger and frustration into positive work on the field and in the gym, in preparation for college soccer.
Lu even echoes Sussman’s sentimental approach to the end of his highschool career, despite a loss right at the end of it.
“A lot of tough things will happen, and you kind of have to get yourself over the hump. You can’t put yourself down,” Lu said. “My relationships with the guys on the team were strong all throughout, and the loss definitely didn’t diminish from it – if anything, it made them stronger.”
