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Arianne Brown: Winning isn't everything, except when you're always losing
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Arianne Brown's son Ace (right) raises his hand in triumph over his head after winning the Sparta Cup Championship. - photo by Arianne Brown
As I stood at the awards ceremony for a recent soccer tournament, I watched as my 9-year-old son, Ace, and his team were presented with first-place medals for a dominating win over the second place team. The following two weeks, Ace and my 8-year-old, Aussie, would each have another opportunity to stand at the podium to receive rewards and accolades for wins at other tournaments.

These were all fun and exciting experiences for my boys as well as our family, and there was not a louder cheerleader than my 12-year-old son Anderson.

After all, it was Anderson who got our family started in this whole soccer lifestyle when we couldnt help but sign him up for city league after unsuccessfully trying to pry his soccer ball from the grip of his strong, natural left foot.

It has been Anderson who wakes his brothers up early in the morning to get their touches in and to play World Cup soccer in the backyard. It is he who spends much of his extra time watching the pros play as he analyzes every move. It is he who has motivational quotes on his wall, including one he wrote that reads, If I dont die today, I will be the greatest soccer player in the world, giving himself no excuses for failure.

And, just like his brothers, he has all the talent in the world and is a joy to watch as he skillfully and tactfully moves along the field, creating plays that only a seasoned player would do.

However, unlike his brothers, success has not come so easily for him.

Over the years, losses have been abundant while wins have been sparse. We have spent countless hours cheering on his team to well-fought losses, then doing all we could to buoy Anderson up on the drives home, telling him that age-old adage that winning isnt everything.

While we believed every word we told him, there is an exception to every rule: Winning isnt everything, except when youre always losing. We knew that Anderson was tired of losing and needed, and deserved, to see the success he had worked so hard for.

So, we made the difficult decision to leave his old team to find one with a success record; one that would possibly give Anderson that chance to see the benefits of his daily dedication.

While his season has yet to begin, we are very hopeful that he will soon have a chance to stand at a podium where he, too, will have a medal placed around his neck.

And as his mother, I look forward to the day when I can watch his younger brothers cheer him on as loudly as he has them.
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From the book 'Outliers' comes proof that good health is more than just genetics
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Friends Jim Young, left, Mike Natale, Jeff Natale and Ryan Kiernan were on Greenwich High School football team together and Jim and Mike were captains. Jim, who was the youngest in Sherry Young's family, was welcome in the homes of the other three boys who still had siblings around and grandparents near. - photo by Sherry Young
As I look back on my life and the lives of others, both personally and in the reading I have done, I am convinced of the necessity of positive human contact in our lives. We are doubly blessed when we are able to make good friends or are a part of a family where we are accepted and loved.

Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers tells of a time in the 1950s when Dr. Stewart Wolf met a physician who practiced in the area of Roseto, Pennsylvania. Roseto was settled by a group of Italian families from Roseto, Italy, who re-created their life again in America.

This was in the 1950s before drugs and measures to prevent heart disease became important. In their conversation the physician said, You know, Ive been practicing for 17 years. I get patients from all over, and I rarely find anyone from Roseto under the age of 65 with heart disease.

Wolf was surprised by these words as, It was impossible to be a doctor, common sense said, and not see heart disease.

Wolf enlisted the aid of a sociologist and friend John Bruhn to help him. They found, There was no suicide, no alcoholism, no drug addiction, and very little crime. They didnt have anyone on welfare. Then we looked at peptic ulcers. They didnt have any of those either. These people were dying of old age. Thats it.

They checked into diet, genetics and possibilities of something in the foothills of eastern Pennsylvania but nothing made sense.

What they found was that Rosetans visited one another, stopping to chat in Italian on the street, say, or cooking for one another in their backyards. (Researchers) learned about the extended family clans that underlay the towns social structure. They saw how many homes had three generations living under one roof and how much respect grandparents commanded. They went to Mass at Our Lady of Mount Carmel and saw the unifying and calming effect of the church. They counted 22 separate civic organizations in a town of just under 2,000 people. They picked up on the particular egalitarian ethos of the community, which discouraged the wealthy from flaunting their success and helped the unsuccessful obscure their failures.

What they found eventually convinced the medical establishment to look beyond the individual and understand the culture people are part of their friends, families and town they came from. They determined that the people we surround ourselves with and the values of the world we inhabit have a profound effect on who we are.

Likely, this study could have been done with other ethnicities. However, my family's experiences with the Italian families in Connecticut ring true to the study. Our hungry and growing sons, especially our youngest son, Jim, who was left home alone with two beady-eyed parents, all had some memorable experiences being fed and loved in the Cos Cob multigenerational families. Proof of the African proverb, It takes a village to raise a child.

We live in an age when the contact we have with people often is on the internet, and many of us live among strangers. Unless we make the effort to reach out, we will become isolated, especially as we age. The Rosetan study is proof that reaching out and communicating may be good for our health.
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