Savage Words: Forget the scoreboard. You went 1-0.

It’s pretty easy to tell when a basketball coach loses the locker room.

When you’ve been around the sport as long as I have, you can see when things go south. It’s happened a lot over the years, when the coach has lost the player’s respect and the quotes that come out of the players mouths are a distant cry from what the coach is saying.

I’ve seen it happen a lot. I’ve been on both sides of it, as a reporter who hears things, and as a PR professional, trying my hardest to make sure the disconnect inside the locker room doesn’t ooze out to the media.

But it happens.

I first met Brandon Valley girls basketball coach Mike Zerr six years ago, just a few days after he was named the new Lynx coach after the resignation of Mark Stadem. We met at the tennis courts at McKennan Park in central Sioux Falls during a high school meet.

I told him then that I’d reach out in a few months to do our annual preview story for the upcoming girls basketball season. As I left, just getting in some small talk, I asked in general what he was hoping for as the new girls basketball coach.

“We just want to go 1-0 every day,” he said.

I didn’t think much of it. It was coach-speak, sort of a throwaway line as we parted ways.

Little did I know six years ago that I’d hear that line more times than I can count.

“Just trying to go 1-0 every day.” I’ve heard Zerr say that to me so many times. I never really paid it much mind. Again, coach-speak, and I couldn’t really use that quote.

But clearly, Zerr has never lost his locker room. Over the past five years, I’ve had so many players tell me the same line when I’ve talked to them after games, or interviewed them on the phone for a feature story.

“Just trying to go 1-0 every day,” she said.

“We’re just doing our best to go 1-0 everyday,” she said.

“Our goal is 1-0 today, every day,” she said.

“We just want to win the day, go 1-0,” she said.

The message inside the Brandon Valley girls’ basketball locker room over the past five years has been heard loud and clear, and it’s obvious everyone’s buying into it. 

After the Lynx defeated Watertown in the SoDak 16 on March 7 to qualify for the state tournament, Zerr and I sat on the Brandon Valley bench as I interviewed him. In probably a stupid and wide open question, I asked him what it was going to take in those three days at the state tournament for Brandon Valley to win its first state title since 2019.

“Just go 1-0 every day,” he said. We both chuckled. He knows he’s delivered that message to me countless times.

On Saturday, just hours before the Lynx faced Sioux Falls O’Gorman in the state championship game, I got a text from Zerr. 

It was a simple text, just a photo of the box score from the semifinal game the night before against Sioux Falls Washington.

The fact that he remembered to send me a box score on a championship game day was cool enough. After I got the photo, the rest of our entire text conversation went like this:

ME: Thanks coach. Win.

HIM: 1-0.

Obviously, they didn’t win and the scoreboard just a few hours later showed O’Gorman 47, Brandon Valley 46.

“I just reminded them that wins and losses don’t define this experience, it doesn’t define who they are,” Zerr told me a day later. “It’s a great group of kids, and I’m extremely proud of all of them for whatever role they play.”

Part of that role was how they handled themselves. No doubt losing a 12-point lead with five minutes to play is a gut punch. But they held their heads high during the trophy presentation. They clapped for the Knights when appropriate. They showed grace in receiving their runner-up medals.

How hard that bus ride home back from Rapid City must have been. But they gathered things back up, went back to school on Monday, and hopefully continued to hold their heads high.

“We didn’t accomplish our goal, and that’s a bummer, but ultimately as time goes on, that fades and what remains is the stuff that other people don’t get to see that makes a team what it is,” Zerr told me in our same conversation on Sunday. “It stings right now, we’re all disappointed. We wanted a different result. We wanted to go 1-0, and we didn’t.”

I’m not so sure about that, coach.

Coach Zerr, and the ladies on the Brandon Valley basketball team: Forget about Saturday night’s scoreboard. In the game of life, you won Saturday. That may not make sense now, but trust me, heroes don’t always show up on scoreboards.

And for the millionth time, I’m impressed. 

This time, let me say it to you: Forget the scoreboard. You went 1-0.