Yes. Winning and loosing is an attitude/culture. If you loose to much, you forget how to win.
No offense guys but the scenario is too loaded of a situation to truly get an answer. If you're developing players then you are going to win most of your games. If you're not then you're going to lose most of your games. Nobody forgets how to win and nobody learns how to lose. You either learn how to perform and have the mental strength to get it done or you don't. It cracks me up when I hear coaches say "I have to teach them how to win". Well how do you do that? Exactly what drill do you do that teaches winning? If you can tell me what that drill is that teaches you to win I want to know what it is because our practices will get a lot shorter. You learn to win by doing things correctly and then you do them correctly more than the other team.
So end of the day a coach is playing to win. They are teaching the guys the best of their ability on how to do things correctly. Some coaches are better than others at getting this done. Some coaches have better players to work with than others. So many things go into winner other than just putting the best 9 on the field. That aspect really isn't that hard. Your best 9 players out of 16 (or whatever you carry) is typically very easy. What's hard is teaching all of them how to do things better than the other guy. Because if they can do that then they are going to win.
If winning was easy then everyone could do it.
I understand and generally agree. I just think the winning is a mindset. You basically said it yourself -- "You either learn how to perform and have the mental strength to get it done or you don't." It is about confidence. Constant loosing affects confidence regardless if any "development" is going on.
I completely agree with you as well in that winning and losing is a mindset. It's close to a chicken and egg situation as to which comes first - do good fundamentals lead to a winning mindset or does a winning mindset lead to good fundamentals? I think the answer is yes they do. Like I said in previous post - there are so many factors in going into winning vast majority of the time it doesn't matter where you start at fixing the problem - you just need to fix it.
If I'm taking over a team that has constantly lost their mindset is going to be terrible. But so will their fundamentals because nobody has taught them and / or they haven't done anything to get themselves better.. Me spending 2 or 3 hours each practice telling them they can be good won't amount to squat. Me spending 2 or 3 hours each practice showing them how to do things right and how to act like a winner will lead to a change in mindset.
I guess what I'm saying is is that as soon as a coach gets up in front of his players and says "we have to win" or "we must win". Now the ends justify the means and they don't. As bad as you want to win it's not very easy because there is that other team in the other dugout who is going to play hard to beat you. They aren't going to lay down and die just because you want to win. You look into the bullpen and they have a guy throwing 65 MPH and think it's going to be easy. Next thing you know you're in a dogfight because he's pitching a gem. Everything on paper says you should win by mercy rule but you're not - why? The answer is that guy throwing 65 is competing and wanting to beat your a$$. But he's not beating you because he wants to - he's beating you because he's making great pitches and you're not making adjustments at the plate to be patient and look the other way. Losers mentality is going up to the plate thinking they can hit a 7 run homer with nobody on base. A winners mentality is going to take that slow outside fastball to opposite field for a double. Like Coach May is saying - only thing you can control is how well you prepare and if you prepare to the best of your ability then you'll probably be fine. You truly cannot control winning because the other team wants to beat you as bad as you want to beat them.
When you turn to winning & losing I think of John Wooden quotes. Two of his best:
Don’t measure yourself by what you’ve accomplished, but rather by what you should have accomplished with your abilities.
You can lose when you outscore somebody in a game. And you can win when you're outscored.
I think if fits this topic perfectly. IMO a JV's primary goal is to maximize players abilities and if they do - the results will be what they are supposed to be over the whole span of the HS career for both player and team. The scoreboard is not the right measure of success.
Coaching my sons through youth ball I took pleasure from the team when we went out and had 1 walk, 0 Errors, ran the bases well, had good at bats. When we did those things we won a heck of a lot of games. We also lost some 2-1 type games to teams that were much better man for man than we were. I was prouder of those losses than the 12-1 wipeouts of inferior teams.
We were viewed as that scrappy bunch that played sound defense, threw strikes and would put the ball in play but we were undersized and had little power. We were that team that good teams hated because we frustrated them by simply biting their leg and never letting go. We had some nice wins but mostly just weren't good enough against the very top line competition. But at places like Cooperstown we would win 7 or 8 games.
In the end I believe it meant the boys did their best in the game situations and in the end that is all any coach can really hope for.