For Mr. Brian Lemke, new athletic director for VVSD, winning is the goal of every contest, but it isn’t the purpose of sports. “[It’s] to actively shape and prepare young adults for life beyond sport,” says Lemke. This includes encouraging athletes from one sport to show up for their peers in other sports and cheer them on. “School spirit is a powerful reflection of pride, achievement and determination,” he says. “It goes hand-in-hand with positivity and is a benchmark of a school’s holistic success.”
In addition to encouraging students to grow beyond just their skills on the field, he also wants parents to reflect on their role on a young athlete’s growth. His philosophy includes giving athlete’s the space to fail—encouraging even those moments that are roadblocks rather than removing them. “We ask parents to lean a little farther away and give their children room to potentially fail,” he says.
Once they’ve experienced that initial failure, parents can then lean back in and guide their children through how to use the experience to motivate them to future success. Here, Lemke uses a basketball analogy: “ ‘too often we see the result of success as the game winning basket, where we do not see the thousands if not millions of missed shots it took to get to that point.’ Trying to take those missed shots away, or scolding them from not taking the shot, can be detrimental to that process.”
“True failure is quitting or giving up,” says Lemke, “because the road to success is usually winding and filled with pot holes…We ask that parents join us on this journey in educating our student athletes on what success really is and really looks like.”
