A would-be champion reflects.
Flash fiction by Rob Spencer
What do you carry when you’ve lost eight finals? For one would-be champion, it’s not the absence of a trophy—it’s the presence of something far heavier: belief, defiance, and the quiet ache of choosing meaning over medals. In this intimate reflection, resilience speaks louder than applause.
They say the locker room feels different after a loss in a final. I wouldn’t know what it feels like after a win.
Eight finals. Eight walks up the tunnel with my chest trying to lift against the weight in my ribs. I learned early that silence is the last sound of hope.
Tonight wasn’t any louder than the others. My shoes felt heavy. My breath was steady—almost rehearsed. I knew how this scene plays. Knew how the crowd sounds when it’s not clapping for you. Knew how to smile just enough during the ceremony that people wouldn’t call it bitterness.
Eight finals. That’s the second most in history. I’m told that like it’s a consolation, but to me, it’s architecture. A shape I built across time—match after match—against legends, against ghosts.
One of them only reached half as many finals as me, and won all four. One of them won once, and never made a final again. The others both knew the joy of winning and the pain of losing, over the 12 years I played.
They say you don’t retire without winning one. That you keep chasing until you lift it. But the truth is… I did lift something. Every time I walked back out there with my heart half-healed, I carried more than a trophy ever could. I carried defiance. I carried belief. I carried the damn nerve to dream again.
And maybe—in eight different universes—there’s a version of me that won once. I think about them sometimes. Not with envy, but with a kind of quiet affection. I hope they smiled. I hope they cried. I hope they understood what it meant.
Then I think about those that never got as far, who crashed out in the semis, or before. Who never stood there on the brink of something as close as I have. Who believed in themselves enough to feel all eight times it was going to happen.
So why go for a ninth?
I’ve already got eight.
And they cost me more than the ninth ever would.
I won’t retire a loser. I refuse to. But I won’t chase another title.
I lost eight finals. I didn’t lose in life.
I remember in high school, when I said I wanted to play professionally. The laughter. Being told how much effort was needed just to compete, that my fire would fizzle by senior year. But I showed them. I really did.
Let someone else chase what I gave my soul to. I’ll be somewhere quiet. Watching. Maybe smiling. Maybe aching a little. But whole, in a way I never expected to be.
I didn’t win—at least not in a final.
But I showed up.
And in this sport, in this life… that’s never nothing.
©Rob Spencer 2025
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