Team athletics are one of the best means I know for children - and adults for that matter - to learn or reinforce life lessons.

As I have mentioned previously, for any youth sports team that I coach, we keep score. Always have. You can't win with grace or lose with dignity unless you know whether you have won or lost.

However, while we keep score, we don't keep standings. Or at least, we never talk about it.

Here is the reason.

For each game during a season, we prepare as best as we can, play hard (and smart) during that game, and then shake hands afterward.

And then it's over. Other than briefly reflecting on what we could have done better or worse as individual players and coaches and collectively as a team, we move on to the next game.

And, for each game, I fully expect that we will be leaving it all on the field again. I have that same expectation, regardless of our performance to-date in the standings.

Once a game is over, you can't do anything about it. While we might be aware of where we are on the ladder, we can't do anything to add or subtract to our win or loss total. So, we move on.

And keep score, but not standings.