You know something though Devils, (and it's a good problem to have), but when you have kids that have rarely experienced a loss, and do, it challenges the coaching staff for the first few days. Good coaches will cause the fire in their kid's bellies to burn even stronger after they get them past that first couple of "would have", "should have", days. But that's a much better problem to have than to try to keep the kids fired up when you go .500 or less, year after year.
Along those same lines, I say Coach Henderson's finest hour last year was immediately after their loss to LT. I know his public statements were gracious and polite, and I'm sure how he handled his locker room afterwards was equally as classy.
There are a lot of other teams that what I'm about to say applies to, but I'll use just you and us for a minute. You know we expect to win every game every week, period. I mean deep down, totally convinced, unquestionably, win every week. And when that inevitable loss happens to a team like us, it is such an unexpected letdown that it's almost no consoling the boys for a couple of days. I'm not sure that last year was not Coach Mills finest coaching job. Defending state champs, and come out and get beat in the first game of the season. At home, too. He brought them around and got the very best out of them the rest of the way.
LT was just at a whole different level than everybody in 4a last year. For that matter, than virtually every team in the state. (Ask Bird). So I don't think that loss stung as bad as the others. But a loss is a loss. I have to qualify this so that I'm not mis-understood. "Show me a good loser, and I'll show you a loser!" It doesn't mean to be an arrogant loser, it simply means that losing eats you alive inside. Just no way you can accept it. And then you look at why you lost, and redouble your determination to not let it happen again. All true champions have this quality.
