On the menu, an inspiring reminder

The Inland Northwest Sports Awards banquet never ceases to stir something in me.

I’m not talking about the effects of the lasagna.

I’m talking about the teaching that goes on.

The classroom is the Ag-Trade Center. The lecturers, all the winners. The students, the high school athletes who attend, thinking they are getting to skip an afternoon of class.

Luckily, this class is pass/fail.

None of the kids sitting at the head table – the nominees for the awards – failed to pass.

Now that doesn’t mean they never failed. They just didn’t let failure stop them. Or define who they are. Or define whether they were winners.

“Do your very best, because that’s how you know you’ve won,” is how Becca Noble put it.

You probably think of Noble for her achievements, all the races she won, the records she set, the stirring comebacks she accomplished.

Heck, the former Rogers High and now University of Oregon runner even strung together two more wins Wednesday. She was named the SWABs junior female athlete of the year and the amateur female athlete of the year, the seventh woman to win both the same year, but the first since Corissa Yasen in 1991.

But from now on, every time I think of Becca, I’m going to think of her quote.

She’s right, you know.

The scoreboard doesn’t really tell you if you’ve won.

OK, before you start typing your e-mails calling me a bleeding-heart, tree-hugging, cowboy-film-lovin’ liberal, I have two words for you: Seahawks.

Though the scoreboard is so much more important in college and professional sports – lose enough and you lose your livelihood – than in the prep ranks, there are still some things you can’t control on the playing field, or court or track.

Sometimes the other team or athlete is better. Sometimes mistakes are made. Sometimes you play as hard as you can, as smart as you can, as well as you can.

And you lose. On the scoreboard.

If you (and I’m speaking about 99.9 percent of you) tried to race Becca Noble over 800 meters, I guarantee no matter how hard you train, how much effort you give, how many times they use a defibrillator on you, you’re gonna cross the finish line behind her.

But that doesn’t mean you wouldn’t try.

And if you “do your very best … that’s how you know you’ve won.”

It’s not the winning that matters. It’s the effort put forth to win that says it all.

The other night I was at a GSL basketball game. The home team lost, but not before giving every ounce of effort to claw back from a double-digit deficit to lose by five.

Talking with the coach afterward, I mentioned how his kids never quit. He agreed, saying they’ve played hard all year, a year that will end in two games, because the playoffs are out of the question.

Still, the boys on his team have learned something in the classroom we call a gym.

Lose, maybe. Quit, never.

That’s what matters.