Octavio Herrera also played baseball when he was Jake's age, and well remembers how it felt. "Nerves in your stomach, right?" he says. "Butterflies. I remember that as a kid, pitching in a game — 10 years old — so nervous and so scared." It may be uncomfortable at the time, he says, but "that's great to have in a situation where the stakes are really low — where, if you fail you're still going to get pizza and ice cream, and your parents are still going to tell you they love you." If kids can learn to fight their fear and work through it, he says, that steadiness comes in handy later in life — when the stakes are much higher. It's an ability Octavio says he relies on routinely, as a software entrepreneur who has created, bought and sold a number of companies.

And at the professional level, I want them to feel the ugly emotions that come with losing, but to also understand that losing a game truly isn’t the end of the world. We will work together to improve, and we will hopefully find a way to achieve success.

“Losing is only temporary and not all encompassing. You must simply study it, learn from it and try hard not to lose the same way again. Then you must have the self control to forget about it.”

What are you?