This will be officially the last column I write for The Stanford Daily. I started writing columns in the fall of 2007. It has been a wonderful three-year journey.

I have written about everything in this space for three years, from Stanford sports and Stanford fans to why I think the NBA is boring to why Venus and Serena Williams in women’s tennis are bigger than Tiger in golf, Peyton in football or Kobe/LeBron in basketball.

I would like to let anyone who reads this column know why I have written it.

It’s because I wrote about sports. I wrote about one of my passions in life. Sure, I enjoy playing and watching sports with my friends and family. I was a three-sport varsity athlete in high school and have spent the last four years as a member of the Stanford track and field team. So I have definitely put in my time as an athlete and as a competitor. But my passion for sports extends far beyond the game.

The mental and emotional sides of sports are what draw me in. The feeling you get when in competition, in the heat of the moment, in a situation where you put everything on the line. The pain of losing something you worked so hard for—the elation of winning and the justification of all the hours, days, months, years of practice—the feelings of “that’s what it was all for,” “that’s why you never quit” and “this will pay off later.

I am not a sport-a-holic. I watch and play a lot of sports but rarely can I quote statistics, tell you about the players’ personal lives or recite the encyclopedia of records. My interaction and experience with sports is on a deeper level.

I have a personal mantra that I believe you can tell a whole lot about a person by 1) the people they surround themselves with and 2) the way they carry themselves when playing sports. In my eyes, sports can cast a light straight through you and illuminate your character for the world to see. How someone reacts to a loss or a win: Do they make an excuse? Do they cry? Do they rub it in someone’s face? Do they shake hands? Do they hold their head up? How invested someone is in what they are doing: How much practice have they done? How prepared are they for what they will face? Do they play with intensity or are they half-assing? How someone accepts something that doesn’t fall their way: Do they complain? Do they argue? Do they take it and move on? Does it motivate them to play harder? Does it deflate them?

These questions are the ones that I constantly have asked myself and others that I see playing sports. They are questions that, if you remove sports and put in any other life situation, define who I am and who I want to be as a person.

I appreciate sports for what they can do for people. How they can bring out sides of people not normally seen. How they can create a family-like atmosphere. How they breed friendship, passion, self-confidence and discipline. All the teams, players, games, seasons, drama, scandals, injuries and news are really just the tip of the iceberg for me. Behind all that is the relationship I can forge between sports and my personal character. I can use each to fuel, enlighten and improve the other. Some of the greatest lessons I have learned in life have been from sports.

So I leave my column, my readers and Stanford with one of my favorite lessons I have learned from sports. It’s something that I try to live by. I definitely have moments where I forget it, but for the most part I’m on par. Take it or leave it, just like with everything I have written in the past.

I would like to tell you to not make excuses and to not complain.

Things are never always going to go your way. Sometimes you just won’t have it. Sometimes your teammate just won’t have it. Sometimes the ref or umpire will make a call that was bad or you don’t agree with. Sometimes you will face a better opponent. Sometimes you’ll just have some bad luck. Sometimes you will miss. Sometimes you will fail.

But don’t complain about it. Don’t sit there and feel sorry for yourself. Don’t create a world in which you never did anything wrong, in which you are always the good guy. Don’t blame others when you may be equally at fault. Don’t refuse to admit you made a mistake. Don’t refuse to come up short.

Because that is where we shine. How we respond to adversity, how we bounce back from a tough time. When you get knocked down, it’s the way we get back up. It’s that hunger to get better. It’s that desire to achieve more than you achieved yesterday. It does not and should not have to come at the price of egoism, arrogance or selfishness. Instead, it can come with intensity, enthusiasm and willingness to bring a group closer together if it means the achievement of a common goal. This is not saying to block out any negative emotion that you may want to feel. Go ahead and feel it. It’s good for you. Just know that there is a way to come out of it, to come out and to thrive.

My favorite sports victory is a grind-it-out victory. Not an easy victory, a coast, something on par with a warm-up. It’s a game in which teams and individuals are struggling to best one another. Both suffer small victories and small setbacks within the game. It’s hard for both teams. It’s painful and it’s tiring. When you watch you are on the edge of your seat because you don’t know how they are going to respond and react out there. The winner is the one that doesn’t give up, that accepts losing small battles in order to win the war. The winner is the one that knows that a champion is not perfect, but flawed in many ways. The winner is the one who takes blemishes on a piece of artwork and uses them to create a new masterpiece.

I urge you to think about this just a bit. You can take it anywhere you go; it doesn’t have to stick to the playing field.

My writing about sports may end here, but my playing and believing will continue far beyond this page. I hope yours does too.

Danny Belch has written on every topic you can imagine. Try to find one he doesn’t have an opinion on at dbelch1 “at” stanford.edu.