There is value in defeat if one uses it to confront weaknesses, then takes the steps to correct them.
In the end, the journey to the goal may have required defeat as a way to confront and correct a weakness — a weakness could have become fatal for your goal.
Most of the time, it’s the lesson learned on the journey that will wind up being more important that attaining the goal itself. Of course, unless one reaches that goal, and takes the steps to get there, one may never realize that.
The big key, though, is to confront and correct the weaknesses — without tearing down your strengths. You will come out stronger if it’s done right.
A lot of this was going through my head Monday and Tuesday. I was in New York City on business and wondered what Penn State wrestling practice was like after the loss to Minnesota. It took me back to the one experience I had at the university with an instructive loss in 1977.
I was not a starter on the team but, by that time, felt I was part of the team — unlike the 1975-76 season, when I had to use constant prayer to even survive. That year — ’77 — we dropped a bizarre match to Navy; the referee had his leg broken during the 190-pound match, and former Penn State great Ron Pifer had to come out of the crowd to referee the final match.
We wrestled lousy that day. The match should have been clinched. But our heavyweight, two-time state champ and football standout Brad Benson, went against a skilled Navy heavyweight named Roger Mitchell. Brad was still rounding into wrestling shape and wound up losing the match.
Coach Koll, who was tough and bottom-line in the first place, was as mad as I could imagine a man could be. First of all, he could not stand losing. To amplify that, he could not stand losing to someone we should beat. And losing in Rec Hall? That is unacceptable. He also had no visible love for Navy, because he was in the Army.
Though my dad was in the Army, and he rooted hard for Army in the Army-Navy games, I never knew him to actually dislike Navy. However, Coach Koll did. Navy’s coach, Ed Peery, like Coach Koll, was a three-time national champ. Peery had wrestled for Pitt, a team that Coach Koll also liked to beat. His dislike for Navy seemed so intense (I would call it hate, but I want to be politically correct), we were not allowed to call a Navy Ride a ‘Navy Ride’ because it was a ‘Lace Ride’: You ‘laced’ your arms over and under the guy’s legs — and if the opponent was from Navy, according to Coach Koll, chances are he wore lace underwear. So that was another reason to call it a Lace Ride.
(I think he was kidding around about that last part, though the first part of his lecture on the Lace Ride made me hesitant to ever ask him about it.)
That rivalry was intense from the coaches through the wrestlers.
In any case, the loss was on a Saturday afternoon, and Coach Koll called a Sunday practice, which we never had. Stupid me — I thought it was for everyone, but it was for the starters. I and two other non starters showed up, anyway.
The scene was unreal. The temperature in the room was as hot as I had ever felt it, and the air was thick with cigar smoke. (Coach enjoyed a good cigar, but this time he wasn’t enjoying them as much as he was creating a certain ambiance in the room for this practice.) Actually, it was like an old-time-movie gym scene.
For 45 minutes, with small breaks, we crawled up and down the mats. I didn’t have to do it; I wasn’t doing it ‘for the team.’ I was simply doing it because I figured if I could do this, then I could do anything. The rest of the guys probably had different motivation.
I don’t know what being close to death is like, but there were a couple of times I thought I was there. Andy Matter would blow the whistle and yell out the kind of crawl. And Coach Koll never said a word, just stood there, arms folded, glaring, smoking a cigar.
When it was over, he finally said: ‘Don’t let me see you wrestle like that again.’
Because some of my teammates were naturally better athletes, they may not have had as tough a time as I did. I do know there was very little talk after practice, just back to the locker and shower. I went back to my dorm room and collapsed. That experience has been with me ever since.
Now this might seem cruel to you, and hindsight is 20/20. I get a kick out of people today who, after the fact, claim this or that was not the way to do it. I don’t think one of us thought this was cruel; instead, we thought it was tough and deserved and would make us better. The loss revealed a weakness we needed to confront and correct.
But here was the secret. Coach Koll pushed us hard enough to correct the malady. (He felt we had not pushed ourselves as we should have and, as a result, had failed to break our lesser opponent.) But in no way did he tear down or destroy what was good. In fact, it was because we were good that he was determined to make sure we performed that way.
For me, the workout was, and still is, the roughest 45 minutes I can remember in any situation. Even today, I compare situations to that, and say: ‘IT’S NOT AS HARD AS THAT 45 MINUTES IN 1977.’ Still, I have to admit, at 56 years old, a couple of the Thursday-morning circuits I have tried to complete with our wrestling staff approach it, and I can’t even complete it the way they do.
Ironically, Mike Bevilacqua, who wrestled under Bill Koll student Rich Lorenzo, says the same thing. There were times when he was tested so much in the room that, in tough times in his life, he remembers incidents in the wrestling room that were tougher than anything encountered since.
So what happened after that Navy match? For me, well, the lesson above. For the starters, the following week, then-No. 1 Lehigh (Depending on what wrestling poll you were following, they came in at No. 1 or No. 2) lost to us in front of a packed house at Rec Hall. The session confronted the reality of a problem and corrected it.
Basically, the problem was that we did not wrestle in a way to test ourselves, and Coach Koll thought it was best we knew what a real test was. All who participated learned a lesson — our starters enough for the big win next week. But he did not destroy the good, just confronted and corrected the weakness.
I have written 10 different endings to this, trying to apply it to the situation today around here, but it all seems to trivialize it. Suffice it to say, to get by any test, be it athletically, ethically or anything, you must have the wisdom to discern what you are weak at, confront it, then strive correct it, without destroying the good. After all, what value is there in destroying good? It simply leaves you weaker.
So since my human limits fail me, I decided to look up.
When Solomon was offered anything as the King of Israel, he chose wisdom. Later in scripture came the famous passage: ‘He that is among you without sin, let him cast the first stone.’
The wisdom that comes only with knowing the truth is needed here, and that can’t be revealed until the trial for the real evil, the alleged unspeakable preying upon the weakest among us in acts of pedophilia. And while I think this is an awesome place to live, I didn’t realize we had so many without sin around here — ’cause a lot of stones have been thrown. They have hit targets that, when the truth comes out, may not have deserved being hit.
Let’s make sure that in correcting the weakness, we don’t destroy the good.
