As a high school sports reporter who covers three different schools, it’s impossible for me to make it out to every game that every team plays. Although I’d love to follow a team for an entire 12-30 game season, the realities of my work schedule don’t allow for it since I have to meet a quota of articles for each school every week. I try to make it out to most home games for each team and the priority usually goes to the squads that are performing the strongest at a particular time.

Checking the schedules of each team daily is crucial for someone in my position. Numbers and scores aren’t able to tell the whole story of course — I’ve been to plenty of games that were close throughout and suddenly became blowouts at the end and vice versa — but seeing how teams performed when I wasn’t there to watch gave me a general picture of how a team is, and thus, how I should cover them.

That’s why Sedona Red Rock High School’s softball season so far is befuddling.

They played each of their first three games on the road, so I wasn’t able to attend. Instead, I had to score-watch their results page on AZPreps365. Those three results were a 29-0 loss to Chino Valley, a 30-14 win over Mayer and a 13-10 loss to North Pointe Prep. Due to the wide variance in the team’s scores, without watching the team it wasn’t the easiest to tell how the team was going to perform when I would eventually cover a game.

I was finally able to make it out to watch on Thursday, March 24 against Northland Prep. They lost 24-2. But what I saw on the field wasn’t what was expected. Despite a lopsided loss, which was a shutout until the fourth inning, the Scorpions kept their heads up and played hard throughout.

In the post-game team meeting, when the players huddled around the coaches to talk about the game, Sedona head coach Pedro Ortega and assistant coach Zack Calandra praised the players’ demeanor. The players were cheerful and optimistic, excitedly proclaiming how they’re going to win Monday against Desert Heights Prep. Academy.

They did. The Scorpions won their first game in the 2A Central Region 13-3. Many teams fold after losing 24-2. Not Sedona.

As a student-reporter at San Jose State University, I was the beat writer for the men’s basketball team, which competes in the Mountain West Conference at the Division I level. I watched every second of every game, either in-person or on T.V., and the Spartans finished 4-27. My interactions with the players and coaches were met with thick tension.

As a reporter, my job is to tell the truth. The truth was that the team was terrible and the coach was on a scorching hot seat. When I’d pass a player on campus or see one at a “function” on a weekend, it was 50/50 whether the player would shoot me dirty looks or come up to voice their complaint about their coach in an effort to get dirt printed on him.

It was a tough situation for someone just trying to learn the business. When I accepted this job with Larson Newspapers, I researched the teams I would be covering. Some were good, some not so much. Writing about losing college or professional teams is a different animal than writing about a high school program that’s struggling, for obvious reasons.

My experience Thursday watching Sedona’s softball and baseball teams made something click within me. The attitude was refreshing, after being screamed at by Division I coaches for writing about how their three-point shooting is, perhaps, a tad under par.

One of the prime examples is junior Annabelle Cooke. Half an inning of watching the softball team is plenty of time to realize she’s the star player. She says she joined the softball squad after just a day of rest at the end of the basketball season, where Sedona took an undefeated 2A record into the state-championship game before a disappointing 2-point loss to Pima. She also plays for a club team, while managing the workload of a high school junior and balancing out-of-state college visits.

Cooke doesn’t have to play for this Sedona team, which isn’t exactly a winning proposition like basketball or club softball, but she does anyway. She’s what Ortega calls an assistant coach on the field. While she has her hands full as a shortstop or third baseman, she’s giving fielding tips to fellow infielders in-between batters. She’s helping teammates on their swings while Sedona’s at bat.

“I wouldn’t call myself an assistant coach because we have two great coaches but I would say kind of a role model or mentor,” Cooke said following Thursday’s game. “I’ve been playing for a long time and my goal is to educate these girls and keep the program going.”

The same could be said for Sedona’s baseball squad. Hastily assembled at the last minute, with jeopardy of missing a season for a lack of players, head coach Chaz Andrzejewski is blunt when he says the goal for this season isn’t to win, but to build culture.

I witnessed that culture being constructed with my own eyes Thursday. The Scorpions lost 17-0, but towards the end of the game Eli Jennings, the team’s lone senior, was playing catcher. He appeared to say “strike three” as a Northland player struck out to end the top of the fifth inning, and the Northland bench didn’t take kindly to it. They were shouting, pointing at the scoreboard and telling Jennings to come back out to the field.

From the tone of their voices, those players wanted escalation. Instead, Jennings stayed in the dugout and rallied his team to go out and get some hits in the bottom half of what would be the final inning.

On Wednesday, the day before, Sedona baseball traveled to North Pointe Prep. for a scheduled game. Problem was, North Pointe didn’t have enough players to field a team. The Falcons forfeited, giving the Scorpions a 1-0 win by rule. The Scorpions didn’t get back on their buses and leave.

Instead, they mixed up the teams and scrimmaged. The teams posed for photos after and made friends. A parent of a player on Sedona’s team said that they’d never seen their son glowing like that after a game before.

That’s what sports are about. At the collegiate and professional — even elite-level high school levels — sure, focus on wins. But in a group of small-population towns in Northern Arizona, we should all remember that winning really isn’t everything.

The reality is, a vast majority of these student-athletes will shed the athlete part of that title when they graduate high school. They’ll move on with their lives as professionals in other fields, or students at higher level educational institutions. What memories should they have from their high school experience? The sad bus rides after a hard loss and their mom or dad yelling at the referees from the stands, versus the camaraderie of the team, the friendships and how a group of young people can overcome adversity? So thank you to Sedona Red Rock High School’s baseball and softball programs, you’ve reminded me why I love sports in the first place.