As the high school and college basketball regular season games come to a close and teams prepare themselves for their respective tournaments, I am reminded of my seven-year stint as a basketball manager.

And, more importantly, I am reminded that there are more important things in life than winning.

My first three years of being a manager were with the Warsaw Men's Basketball Team and the last four were with the Butler University Men's Team. Both teams were successful and I have three championship rings, pieces of basketball net and newspaper clippings to prove it. So I know what winning feels like, as well as losing. But, again, there are more important things in life than either one of those.

During my stint at Warsaw I was part of the team that went to the Final Four in 1992. I was there on the bench when Jason McKenzie made the last-second shot against Kokomo to take Warsaw to the Indiana Final Four. (This was before the Indiana High School Athletic Association messed up Indiana basketball by putting the class system into place.)

I haven't forgotten those players from that year and all that I learned from them. Guys like Jeff Polk, Eric Knisely, McKenzie, Matt Horin, Ray Reed, Blaine Conley and several others (including the entire junior varsity team) made my high school sophomore year memorable. They also taught me a little about myself. Even if we had lost in sectionals, those guys, in perspective, helped me to grow up a little more than they probably can fathom.

During my junior year, Warsaw won the sectional and regional. Kevin Ault was a freshman then and he had just begun to show Warsaw what he was capable of becoming. Of course, he led the 1996 Warsaw team to the Final Four again and then was recruited to play at Southwest Missouri. He was also named Indiana's Mr. Basketball.

My senior year, we won the Northern Lakes Conference and sectional championship. But again, while I remember winning those, I remember the team more. The team, including fellow managers and coaches, made me laugh, built up my self-esteem and created some of the character that is me. The hard work, and it was sometimes difficult, would help me later.

That's not to say all three years were perfect, but I wouldn't trade the experience for anything.

After graduating from high school, I went to Butler University. I wasn't sure if I wanted to continue being a basketball manager. There was school to consider. Basketball managing takes so much time. Not only does a manager arrive an hour before the players, but at least one manager usually ends up staying an hour after practice.

But I had so many good memories of basketball in high school. And McKenzie was a junior on the Butler basketball team when I was a freshman, so I would know one person right off.

I went to the basketball office and talked to an assistant basketball coach and told him I was interested in being a manager. Of course, I did a little name dropping. I told him I went to school with McKenzie and was a manager at Warsaw, too. He knew about Warsaw.

That was the beginning of my four years of being a basketball manager at Butler.

While all four years were winning seasons, it wasn't until my junior and senior years that we won our conference tournament and played in the NCAA tournament. In 1997, we played Cincinnati in the first round and lost. It was the first time in 35 years that Butler went to the NCAA play-offs. In 1998, Butler played New Mexico in the first round and lost.

It was heartbreaking to lose after getting so far both years, but as the days roll into months and the months into years, the winning and the losing matters less to me. It's the memories and the friends I made that matter.

Many of the players I had the opportunity to work with are now professionals, in grad school, getting married, having children, or soon will be doing one or all of the above. We are all going on with our lives.

New players are stepping into the annals of Warsaw or Butler basketball every year. Warsaw graduate and former player Luke Reed is now a freshman walk-on at Butler. Ault is a junior and major player at Southwest Missouri.

Caleb Gilmer, a Warsaw graduate and former Warsaw player, is playing hard at Grace College. A couple of other former Warsaw managers are now teaching in local Warsaw schools.

They, like all the rest of the 50-plus men I worked alongside during my seven years of basketball managing, are out in the world being successful.

And it's simple to know why most of them are becoming successful.

I learned from my seven years of being a manager on seven different teams about hard work, dedication and the concept of team. And while there were some bad moments, I'd like to think the good ones outweighed the rest. I believe that some of the players may have learned the same concepts.

And I hope that each of those seven teams left a little legacy for others to look back on. That would be pretty cool to me.

More importantly, I hope each player, past and present, is striving to be the best he can be. It is within each one to do so. But, one doesn't have to be a basketball player to be a successful person.

Anyone with the drive, the desire to work hard, and the dedication can be successful.

As the musical group The New Radicals says, "You've got the music in you." [[In-content Ad]]