Last year, I coached a Bentley University women's basketball team that was undefeated and won the national championship. This year, it was a very unsuccessful season—for me at least—and we ended up with a sub-.500 won-lost record, the first one for me at Bentley.

So it was a harsh dose of reality. And we had to swallow our pride and ego and realize that we weren’t untouchable. Maybe we had a sense that we couldn’t be beaten, or that we were always going to be successful. But basketball is like life, and sometimes you really get smacked in the face.

One thing I’ll tell you is, don’t sit on the success bubble, because it can burst on you.
 

My job as the team leader is to make sure the disappointment and frustration doesn’t get to the players and other coaches.

And my advice to them—or to anyone who suffers a major reversal in their lives—is to find your inner resilience and come back.

All of us can deal with failure. But the important thing, from my perspective, is to remember that failure is not a death sentence.
 

So how do you come back?
 

1. Understand Why You Failed
   This requires realism. I look in the mirror and ask what I could have done better. I think others should do that, too. I’m not pointing fingers here—just suggesting that this is the way to rebound from defeat.
   
   
2. Be Persistent
   We’re going to come in every day next season and, even though the mountain we need to climb is high, we’re going to give it our all, and we’re going to try to improve and get better every single practice and game.
    
3. Be Resourceful and Creative
   We’ll figureit out. And we’ll come up with a way to correct our mistakes. You have to do this. There’s no alternative if you want to be successful again.
    
4. Understand that it’s a Process
   When you experience failure, you have to accept the fact that you’re not necessarily going to get back to the top of the mountain right away. We need to be patient. We need to focus on the now.
    
5. Accept Who You Are and What You Can Do We’re only human. Yes, I can coach the players and help them grow tremendously—on the court and off. And, yes, we can have a burning, burning desire to be great and win. But, in the end, we are who we are. That helps to put things in perspective, and it helps to take some of the pressure off of failure—not all the pressure, because we’re competitive, but some of the pressure.

Check out this article on why Bentley professors are daring students to fail.

The most important advice, though, is that any of us can drop a goose egg at any time. The wisdom here is understanding that this can happen, not buckling as a result of it happening, and working thoughtfully and persistently to roll back the reversal.

Barbara Stevens has led the Bentley women’s basketball team to more than 900 victories and the 2014 NCAA Division II National Championship. She has been inducted into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame and the Bentley Athletic Hall of Fame.