Before the championships, the trophies, and the highlight reels, there was usually a quieter moment nobody remembers.

Failure. Real failure.

The kind where a kid stares out the car window after practice, pretending they’re fine. The kind where a parent wants to fix the hurt but knows they can’t. The kind where confidence takes its first punch.

Most people know Tom Brady as the greatest quarterback in NFL history. But before the rings and records, Brady was drafted 199th overall. Six quarterbacks were taken before him. Even earlier, he spent years fighting simply to get noticed.

Then there’s Michael Jordan. Long before becoming basketball royalty, Jordan was cut from varsity as a sophomore in high school. Imagine that drive home. The embarrassment. The doubt. The sting of feeling overlooked.

Not untalented. Not hopeless. Just not ready yet.

That’s an important difference.

I remember my own version of that feeling.

In 1983, I was a portly 5'2" seventh grader at the brand-new Marina Middle School. I was eleven, entering seventh grade, and had just turned twelve when basketball tryouts started in November. Short, chubby, and overly confident, I somehow convinced myself that trying out basketball was a great idea.

Truthfully, I was well below average. But when you’ve dunked on Magic Johnson a thousand times in your imagination, your self-scouting report gets a little inflated. Basketball was still new to me, and the tryout process felt brutal. Back then, there wasn’t much concern about protecting feelings. Coaches posted two public lists on the wall. One showed who made the team. The other listed every kid who got cut, ranked in order.

Twenty-one seventh graders who got cut were ahead of me in talent. Twenty-two kids got cut. I was number twenty-two.

Dead last.

At twelve years old, that hits hard. Not because it ruins your life, but because it’s often the first-time life teaches you that effort and outcome are not always the same thing. For the rest of my life, I used humiliation as fuel. I made the basketball team the following year but played only 38 seconds over an 18-game middle school season. Eventually, I realized basketball wasn’t my sport.

I never played organized basketball again. But I also never got cut again in any sport.

Youth sports sometimes label kids far too early. By middle school, adults begin handing out invisible categories:

“Star.”
“Average.”
“Bench player.”
“Not athletic enough.”

But development doesn’t happen on a clean timeline. Some kids peak early. Some grow later. Some need confidence before talent fully appears. And some of the strongest athletes are built in the moments where things did not go their way.

Legendary coach Nick Saban once said, “Mediocre people don’t like high achievers, and high achievers don’t like mediocre people.” Growth usually requires discomfort. Greatness is rarely born from easy seasons.

And coaches feel that discomfort too. Few things weigh heavier on a coach than telling a young athlete they didn’t make the team. Most coaches remember those conversations far longer than the athletes realize. Behind every roster decision is usually a human being who understands they may have just handed a child their first real heartbreak.

What separated Brady and Jordan wasn’t that life spared them disappointment; it was that they had different expectations. It was their response to it. They didn’t let a single painful chapter define them.

As John Wooden famously said, “Success is never final. Failure is never fatal. It’s courage that counts.”

One coach’s opinion is not a final verdict on a child. One rough season does not erase potential. One moment of disappointment does not define a future.

Sometimes the kid who gets cut develops the deepest drive. Sometimes pain becomes fuel. And sometimes, years later, that same kid smiles a little, remembering he once finished dead last on a middle school basketball list… and somehow kept going anyway.

And that, folks, is a comeback worth cheering for.

(Our summer season story angle grab bag of topics is now open to you.  Do you have an idea or an area of youth sports you have always wanted to ask, but felt you could not? Then this is your chance. Email your story ideas to [email protected]. Your name will remain anonymous.)