Throw-Back Thursday: Teaching student-athletes accountability extends beyond the mats

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in WIN’s Volume 29 Issue 9, which was published on May 30. 2023. The above photo from the 2025 Kansas Kids State Championship appeared in Volume 31 Issue 8 in the Kansas Notebook section. 

By Tristan Warner 

As the old adage goes, you learn more from a loss than from a win.

But is that a guarantee? Do you always learn from a loss?

An individualized sport like wrestling exploits weaknesses, mistakes, and shortcomings, which allows for many teachable moments when reflected upon properly.

Surely, some aspect of technique, mat awareness, strategy, decision-making, etc. can always be fine-tuned, usually even after a win, for that matter.

But even more crucial to a student-athlete’s development than learning from a loss is the notion of taking accountability for a loss.

Not long ago I was coaching at a youth tournament and watched a father, disgruntled by an official’s call that he did not agree with, rush out to the mat to console his kid after a hard-fought defeat.

As the two dejectedly trudged off the mat, the father yelled loudly, still within an earshot of the referee, “that’s ok, you didn’t really lose that match! The referee lost it for you!”

The hair stood up on the back of my neck. I was greeted with an uncomfortable sort of cognitive dissonance at that moment, especially because it felt all too familiar.

I had to be honest with myself for a moment.

I had heard statements like that far too often growing up. I even made them myself when frustrated after a poor performance.

Now in this moment, as an older and wiser coach, I did not agree with the comments because they lacked sportsmanship and felt childish, but I realized the most glaring problem with the statement was that it removed all accountability for the outcome of the match from the young shoulders of the athlete.

In essence, statements like the one I heard that day, and have heard far too often, teach young wrestlers that it is not their fault that they lost and there is someone or something else to blame.

Before I knew it, I was swirling down a rabbit hole in my mind.

How many times did I have a bad practice in college and immediately start searching for an excuse? Was I dehydrated? Malnourished? Not properly warmed up before live wrestling started? Sore from a heavy lift the day before? A weight class smaller than the guy who was taking me down repeatedly?

How about after losing a match? Bad weight cut? Ate the wrong meal before the match? Referee was not in position to count back points? My coaches made me pick bottom?

The list of excuses employed could fill the rest of this page.

And they might sound stupidly sort of funny because we’ve all been there. We’ve all done it, right? Or, just as bad, we know that person who makes those excuses all the time.

We all know a has-been wrestler who can rattle off all the matches or tournaments he or she “should have won” or “almost won,” but those statements are always followed by a “but” and then an excuse.

It is human nature to reach for those rationalizations as to why the ending we strived for failed to materialize.

And the worst part is, as bad as that all sounds, the true detriment is not just making excuses for losing but in the way you train your brain to rationalize and defer blame when things go awry.

Soon, the excuses reach far beyond the wrestling mat.

Just as the sport of wrestling is heralded for molding young boys and girls into disciplined, determined, hard-working, productive citizens later in life, in the same way, training your mind from a young age to search for excuses and shift accountability can become a persisting bad habit.

If I was so quick to search for excuses for why I had a bad practice, a bad match or a bad tournament, what stops me from searching for an excuse as to why I was late to work, turned in a sloppy report or failed to communicate with my spouse?

Accountability is a paramount foundation to instill in young wrestlers, even more so than the ability to improve as wrestlers.

By learning to take accountability, naturally they will always learn from defeat because they will draw the focus back to improving themselves and not deflecting the blame.

What I wanted to tell that young man who was intercepted by his father prematurely was that he wrestled a good match and put forth a respectable effort, but he must keep improving and working harder to separate himself from his opponents.

Questionable calls are the nature of any sport. Control what you can control. Take accountability for what you can control. And win or lose, go back to the drawing board the same way in search of ways to improve.