Agony of Defeat

March 13, 1961, La Crosse Tribune

Winners and losers.  For every ecstatic victor, there is a dejected finisher whose fans follow right along to the bitter end.  Some are in shock, staring vacantly into space, while others hide their eyes, too anxious to watch the inevitable.  The sudden heartbreak is too much to bear.  There is no tomorrow, only the next campaign.  For the seniors, it becomes a personal asterisk on their record, a stigmata that will always mark the year that they could not get the job done.  All the cliched platitudes about being proud of their season, about getting that far...in the moment, they cannot salve this sting of defeat.  For those lower classmen, they will say there is the next season, but the soon-to-be graduates will always know how close to the sun they flew before the fall.  As time moves on,  they reassess their experiences. They take comfort in knowing they did their best, but every now and then they sit thoughtfully and wonder, what if?