Fun vs Rewarding

Do you want to have fun doing something or do you want to do something that is rewarding?

Have you ever heard the following statement: “The sport just isn’t FUN for me anymore.”? It is said too many times by too many people and for all the wrong reasons.

My suggestion to those players who make that statement is this: If it is solely Fun you are looking for, go play in the park or in lower teams! You can decide if you had Fun every night when you are done playing, based on how you think you played. You invested nothing more than your time and effort during that particular time and if you didn’t have Fun, then you don’t have to come back the next night!

Our hope is that when you play a sport, you did it because it is or was a REWARDING experience.

Rewarding

In our opinion, Rewarding lasts forever while Fun lasts for the rest of the day!

Rewarding experiences happen when you go through things that aren’t necessarily fun in order to achieve results that often times exceed expectations. And typically, if it is truly a rewarding experience; you have gone through difficult, enjoyable, humbling, crazy, and sometimes painful times with people you have the good fortune to call Teammates!

1. Is it fun to get up early and lift weights for 2 hours before you go to your summer job? Or is it rewarding to see how the results of those hours spent lifting, improve your individual contribution and also improve the overall team strength?
2. Is it fun to bust your tail in practice every day and not get the minutes you had hoped for? Or is it rewarding to know you play with a group of guys and for a group of coaches who appreciate and value every ounce of effort you put into the success of a program and who know that same effort will be rewarded later on in life if not later on in a career?
3. Is it fun to go through pre-season conditioning during hot September afternoons? Or is it rewarding to find a way to get into the best physical condition of your life in order to be part of a well conditioned team?

Fun bases everything on winning or losing and personal satisfaction or dissatisfaction. 

Let’s be honest, it is not fun to work your tail off on a project in the real world, only to find out that someone else got the account or someone else slipped in at the last second and stole the deal you worked so hard to seal! Those things aren’t fun, but learning from those things and using that knowledge to make it happen in your favor the next time is rewarding!

Think of the number of personal relationships that could be saved by a willingness to work through things that aren’t fun to achieve a rewarding end!!!

We live in a society that preaches and promotes immediate self gratification, in other words, “HAVE FUN”! Unfortunately, that mentality is what tears at the fabric of team sports and personal relationships in general, and in turn makes words like “sacrifice” “commitment” and “trust” seem obsolete or sound like some outdated values!

REWARDING experiences are those that seem to incorporate words like sacrifice, commitment, and trust and in the end become the most valuable experiences of our lives! 

With thanks to:

Greg Stemen – Head Coach Southwest Minnesota State University Basketball
“Many times in my own life I chose to focus more on the “fun” rather than risking the absence of fun to achieve the “rewarding”.

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