Losing with class

On Friday my high school played it's biggest game: our rivals. And it was their homecoming to top it off. When I was a sophomore we lost for the first time in twenty-two years. A bummer? Very much so. Then my junior year we played them at our homecoming...they won again. Now it's my senior year and my class has yet to beat our cross town rivals. My friends and I showed up forty-five minutes before the game began and the stands were already packed. My school was a reputation of having a very loud student section. And Friday night was the loudest we've been. In the first quarter the other team gets a touch down. That was the only touch down the entire game.  As the final minutes of the fourth quarter ticked away, our student section went silent. And slowly we all raised our right pointer finger in the air. This is a tradition that started my sophomore year. Our theme that year was We Are One. We use the raised finger to show our team that we are one and we still stand behind them. I thought this was the classiness that my school represents. But of course not everyone sees loosing the same way. There were three kids in the crowd that decided that it'd be better to flip the other school off. Now this is what really impressed me. The students around the kids that were flipping people off told them to stop. These were high school teenagers that were telling their peers to stop disrespecting the other team. Now that can't be easy, standing up to peers like that. In the moment it's easy for us to get caught up in the emotions and the drama of the loss, but my school handled the loss classy, except for those three kids but I guess we can't expect everyone to be a good loser.  

There are two types of people in this world. Those that stand beside their team and those that trash the opposing team. Yes there's a difference. When you stand beside your team you encourage them, you stay classy in the face of defeat. Now the people that trash the opposing team do exactly that: trash the opposing team.  They're the people that flip them off, boo, and throw stuff at the field. This reveals more about their character then  they can imagine. Losing is comparable to a trail in life. There are two ways people face trails. They either accept the cards they were delt and stand strong in the face of adversity. Or they turn bitter and spiteful against the world and against those around them. We know  both kinds of people. Don't we? 

So which are you when trails come your way? Are you a classy loser? Or do you tend to stick a finger to the world? Just food for thought today.