Coaching

I spent my whole Friday morning glued to the awarding ceremony of the National Schools Press Conference. Some students, from Central Visayas, were under my wing for column writing. While watching, I was quietly praying for their names to be called. One emerged at a podium finish and at that moment, it felt like a full circle moment for all the hard work to be finally recognized. You see, in coaching or mentoring, winning is often treated as the ultimate goal.

As I’ve became accustomed to the yearly journalism principle, it is actually more a visible proof that a team, a school, or a system has done something right. Yet actually, it is about the skills gained and relationships formed in this new journey. In competitions like the NSPC, rankings, medals, and championships are announced with much anticipation because they matter to those who are competing but true campus journalists define it differently. Success purely by winning is to miss the deeper purpose of coaching, and more importantly, of learning.

Winning is gratifying, yes, It affirms preparation, validates strategy, and rewards discipline. For coaches, it can feel like the culmination of months of guiding students through drills, revisions, and moments of doubt. To those who did not make it, losing is not failure. It is feedback. It reveals gaps that winning can sometimes conceal. A team that loses learns where their storytelling lacked depth, where their editing needed precision, or where their understanding of issues fell short. These are not shortcomings to be ashamed of; they are starting points for growth.

The danger lies in how both winning and losing are framed. If winning becomes the only acceptable outcome, students begin to equate their worth with results. They write not to inform or to tell meaningful stories, but to please judges. Creativity narrows. Risk-taking disappears. Coaching then shifts from mentorship to mere performance management.

On the other hand, if losing is treated as defeat rather than development, students carry the weight of disappointment longer than they should. They begin to fear participation instead of embracing it. This is where coaching matters most --not in moments of victory, but in moments of loss.

In the NSPC, where competition is intense and standards are high, this mindset is crucial. Not every student will go home with a medal, but every student can go home better than they arrived. They can leave with sharper critical thinking, stronger writing skills, and a deeper understanding of the responsibility that comes with telling stories.

Ultimately, coaching is not about producing winners. It is about developing individuals who can think, write, question, and grow. This is whether they stand on stage or not because in the long run, the true measure of success is not who won or lost at the NSPC. It is who continues to write, to tell stories, and to make sense of the world long after the competition ends. I’m excited for the road ahead and the next batch of campus journalists. We need them more than ever.