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WHAT IT TAKES TO BE NUMBER ONE
by Vince Lombardi
Revised for dance/drill teams by Joyce E. Pennington
Winning is not a sometime thing; it's an all the time
thing. You don't win once in a while. You don't do
things right once in a while. You do them right all the
time. Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.
There is no room for second place. There is only one
place in my mind and that is first place. In college
football there is a second place bowl game. But it is a
game for losers played by losers. It is, and always has
been, an American seal to be first in anything we do and
to win and to win and to win.
Every time a dancer goes
to apply her talents, she's got to dance from the ground
up and from the soles of her feet right up to her head.
Every inch of her has to dance. Some girls dance with
their heads, and that's OK. You have got to be smart to
be number one in any business, but more important,
you've got to dance with your heart--with every fiber of
your body. If you're lucky enough to find a dancer with
a lot of brains and a lot of heart, she's never going to
leave a competition in second place.
Running a dance/drill team is no different from running
any other kind of organization --a football team, an
army, a political party, a business. The principles are
the same. The object is to win--to beat the other guy.
Maybe that sounds hard or cruel. I don't think it is.
It's a reality of life that dancers are competitive and
the most competitive contests draw the most competitive
dancers. That's why they are there--to compete. They
know the rules and objectives when they enter the
"game". The objective is to win--fairly, squarely,
decently, by the rules--but to win.
And, in truth, I've never known a dancer worth her salt
who in the long run, deep down in her heart, didn't
appreciate the grind, the discipline. There is something
in good people that really yearns for, needs, discipline
and the harsh reality of head to head combat. |
