Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Why We Compete

Losses are usually sobering events that cause us to take stock of ourselves and reassess why we compete. My sons competed in the Texas 5A State Marching Band Competition yesterday in San Antonio's Alamodome. The competition is held every other year and two years ago they took the runner up spot. They worked very hard again this year and put together an outstanding show. They scored very well in the area competition a couple of weeks ago and that seemed to bode well for state. The preliminaries started at 8:00 am and continued until 5:00 pm as 31 teams put on their shows for the judges. Our band performed very well, but when the ten finalists were announced they didn't make it. This was quite surprising because four of the five bands from our area did make the finals even though we outscored all of them except one in the area competition.

The events remind me that the true reason for competition is to motivate us to reach our potential. It's nice to win, but if you've done your best then that is the real goal. As nice as it is to win, it is more important to stretch ourselves and accept the results with grace.

1 comment:

Sister Mary Lisa said...

It's so true. If you said these words to your sons, then that's wisdom they can count on. Great stuff. I'm sorry for their sake they didn't make the top 10...seems like a bummer.