Winning the Game, Losing the Player

“Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.”

— Robert Louis Stevenson

I was watching a youth basketball game recently.

One team couldn’t miss. Full-court press. Traps. Fast breaks. Running up the score.

Coach was fired up. Parents were cheering. The kids were winning.

But something was off.

None of those kids could dribble with their left hand. Their shooting form was broken. Their footwork was sloppy. They were winning the game, but they weren’t building players.

They were building a moment.

And it made me think about concrete.

When you coach youth sports for the win, you get immediate satisfaction. The scoreboard tells you you’re doing a good job. Everyone goes home happy.

Fast forward five or ten years and those same kids hit a wall. They plateau. They quit. They never reach their potential because no one built their foundation. No one was willing to sacrifice winning today so they could develop skills that would last.

Concrete is no different.

We’re producing concrete today that “wins” at 28 days. It hits strength. It passes the test. It gets accepted. Everyone moves on.

Then the surface starts failing in 12 to 24 months.

Not 75 years. Months.

That theme came up in my conversation with Dr. Jon Belkowitz on the podcast. Why are we so comfortable watching concrete surfaces fail in 12 to 24 months without revisiting the 75-year promise behind them? If you want the full conversation, it’s Episode 145 on the Concrete Logic Podcast site.

Concrete structures were never intended to be temporary. They were designed with the expectation they’d serve for generations.

But that expectation was built on more than compressive strength.

It was built on durability. It was built on protecting the surface. Because the surface is the first line of defense. Once that surface is compromised, everything underneath becomes vulnerable. The clock starts moving faster whether we want to admit it or not.

Somewhere along the way, we started focusing on the wrong scoreboard.

We became obsessed with early strength, slump, and air. Numbers that are easy to measure. Easy to specify. Easy to enforce. Easy to “win.”

But those numbers were never intended to guarantee long-term durability. They’re acceptance tools. They tell us what we got that day, not how long it’s going to last out in the real world.

And as long as those numbers get met, everyone can point to the spec and say the concrete was acceptable, even if it starts falling apart shortly after.

That’s what shortcuts look like.

Shortcuts don’t feel like shortcuts in the moment. They feel like efficiency. They feel like progress. They feel like winning.

But shortcuts always send the bill later.

And here’s the part contractors don’t talk about enough. We love to argue about the initial cost of a cubic yard like that’s the whole story.

Maybe you shave a few bucks per yard up front at the beginning of the job.

Great. Now what did you buy yourself during placement?

Is it harder to place and finish? Does it get sticky? Does it drag? Does it make your finishers fight it the whole time? How much is that labor worth when the crew is standing there burning daylight?

Does it leave you with bug holes to patch later? Rock pockets at formed edges? Honeycombing around embeds because it didn’t consolidate the way it should? Now you’re paying for patching, rubbing, extra inspection attention, and the time it takes to make a bad surface look “acceptable.”

That cost is real. It just shows up under a different line item, usually at the worst possible time.

And then there’s the stuff nobody prices correctly. The rework, the callbacks, the schedule hits, the “can you just come look at this” meetings that eat half a day and never show up in your margin report.

Saving five bucks a yard doesn’t feel so smart when you donate crew time babysitting a mix that should have been questioned before it ever showed up.

Then zoom out.

In youth sports, the bill shows up when the athlete can’t compete anymore.

In concrete, the bill shows up in maintenance, repairs, traffic control, and replacement. And traffic control alone can cost more than the concrete itself. We end up paying far more to fix something than it would have cost to reduce the risk up front.

The hard truth is the industry didn’t lose the ability to build durable concrete.

We lost the habit of prioritizing it.

We started optimizing for what was easy to measure instead of what mattered most. We started coaching concrete to win at 28 days instead of preparing it to perform for 75 years.

I try to think in tens. Is the decision I’m making good for ten minutes, ten days, ten months, and ten years?

Most shortcuts pass the ten-minute test. Very few pass the ten-year test.

Durable concrete requires the ten-year mindset. It requires decisions that may not show immediate benefits but pay off over decades. It requires resisting the pressure to win today in order to make sure it lasts tomorrow.

Foundations don’t show up on the scoreboard. They don’t get celebrated. They don’t get noticed when things go right.

But they determine everything that happens later.

Concrete was never meant to win at 28 days. It was meant to last 75 years.

So the question is whether we’re willing to start building it that way again.