Win or lose; it's still a great game

By JORDAN DAWSON / Bigfork Eagle

In life, you win some and you lose some, and in sports this theory only seems to be magnified. This weekend all of my football teams lost, and I heard about it from everyone. The Seahawks opened the season with an embarrassing 34-10 loss to Buffalo. The University of Washington Huskies, where I went to college, narrowly lost their first home game against Brigham Young University, 28-27. My new team, the Bigfork Vikings, struggled to put points on the board as well, losing to Hamilton 59-15.

I point this out not because I want everyone to think I had a rough weekend. It was actually a really fun one despite the losses. My purpose is actually two-fold. First of all, I want to point out that an "L" instead of a "W" is just as possible and just as disappointing whether it happens in the NFL or high school Class A football. Every team is capable of making mistakes, is susceptible to feeling the pain of a young team and of having to deal with injuries and other uncontrollable circumstances. What really matters is how a team learns from the issues that caused the lose. There is almost always a next game, and often a next meeting with the team you lost to. But you have to deal with the loss first and take the time to learn from it. This is the case whether the loss is by 44 points or one. A loss is always hard for the players and for their fans, but unless your job is on the line, it is definitely not worth letting it ruin your weekend.

This brings me to my second reason for pointing out my "losing" weekend. My friends and I still had a great time watching the games that were televised this weekend. I was at a wedding on Saturday, but I still managed to keep tabs on the Husky game and the Griz game in between the "I do's" and cake. It was good to hear that the Griz won, 30-28. They definitely provided my silver lining in sports this weekend. Sunday I recovered from the weekend's festivities by laying on the couch with my friends, switching through the NFL games and eating pizza. Honestly, one of the best ways I could have spent my Sunday.

I did get a few laughs for my Hawks loss. Especially when they replayed the horrible play where Buffalo faked a field goal attempt and scored a touchdown without a Seahawk defender in sight.

They used the DVR to rewind and show it to me over and over. All I could say is, "We play the 49'ers at home next weekend. We'll win that one!" And maybe we won't.

But the great thing about sports is there's always next time to do things a little different. There's always someone else's team to mess things up worse than yours, and always a chance for your team to blow another team out of the water. You can't win them all, even if you're a Patriots fan.