Winning Isnt Everything Its The Only T
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.
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
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.
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