THE HUMAN CONDITION: WHY WE COMPETE : The Will to Win

Winning is all about self-gratification. It’s the best feeling there is. It gives you a real high. . . . Losing is the worst. It makes you feel terrible, depressed and angry . I hate to lose. --Anne Schreick, 52, tournament bridge player

Bodies bang and bounce in all directions on the parquet court. Sweat slops here and there, intensity and insults--cumulating like a thundercloud--hang thick in the air. Ten men play an emotion-charged basketball game that in the humidity of battle has rapidly degenerated into tag-team wrestling.

These guys burst to the rim with what one of them calls “the joy of competition.”

“What the hell. . . . Don’t bring that weak (stuff) in here,” one player blurts to an opponent after blocking his shot and grabbing the ball.

Moments later, Rick drives for what appears to be an easy basket. Suddenly, Bob stretches his forearm and smashes Rick in the chops, dropping him under the hoop like a load of dirt.

“I’ll pay you back for that,” says Rick, dazed and wobbling.

“What? You ran into my forearm,” fires back Bob, less than penitent. “I just put my arm up to protect myself.”

Truth be told, Bob was really protecting his team’s one-point lead. And, in a protracted sense, his competitive ego.

It was the joy of competition, he admitted later; he wiped out Rick because, well, he wanted to win-- badly .

For a lot of men and women, winning is serious business: If it’s not the only thing, it’s on a very short list.

And it’s not just sports or games. These turbo-charged competitors can be stoked by landmark career confrontations or a lousy game of Parcheesi. Hand these folks a Ping-Pong paddle and you may as well give them a hatchet.

“Some people are just extremely competitive,” says John Callaghan, professor of exercise science and director of sports studies at USC. “If they don’t win at something, their whole self-esteem is destroyed. They feel it deeply when they lose.”

The notion is almost comical when one considers Rick Bryant, Bob Lofton and their group of oh-so-serious pick-up basketball players, who gather every Wednesday night to do battle at a church gym in Pasadena.

Off the court, they are friendly, reasonable people: a bunch of middle-aged accountants, salesmen, teachers, lawyers, bankers and doctors.

Toss up the ball, however, and Mother Teresa would get knocked upside the head driving for the game-winning basket.

“I kinda like to mix it up,” admits Lofton, 34, a TV production accountant/power forward.

Adds Bryant, a 36-year-old financial analyst for Walt Disney Imagineering: “No doubt about it: When we go to play, we want to win. Even if I am beating my best friends, I go all out. We’re all going after the brass ring. Getting it is a thrill.”

And missing it can be painful.

According to William Parham, a sports psychologist who works with U.S. Olympians and athletes at UCLA, some ultra-competitive people--athletes and non-athletes alike--attach large portions of their identity and self-worth to certain activities. They validate themselves, he says, by achieving success in those endeavors, regardless whether outsiders deem them significant.

It could be leading the company in annual sales, baking the best batch of brownies on the block or having the slimmest thighs at the local spa.

“This runs from crossword puzzles to the world of business to women’s track and field,” says Parham.

And, he adds, ultra-competitiveness isn’t just a macho thing: “In today’s society, where so many of us--both men and women--have been socialized to win, to get to the top, we have to work at not assigning self-esteem to everything we do. If you don’t win, it doesn’t mean you’re a lesser person.”

Try telling that to Duane Zobrist, Anne Schreick and Lance Pierce: They’d rather drive a nail through their lower lips than lose to you.

Zobrist, 51, of Altadena, has tried to beat the world since he was a 14-year-old apprentice meat-cutter at a beef-processing plant in Las Vegas. Before he could go global, however, he had to tackle his neighborhood meat shop.

“I worked 60 hours a week, competing against grown men,” Zobrist says. “I tried to cut meat quicker, better than anyone else in the place. I discovered back then that I had to work more hours than anyone else just to be happy.”

As a burgeoning ultra-competitor, he discovered he had to win.

“There were six kids in my family, and we competed in everything,” he says. “We had a humble background, my father was a bread-truck driver, so I always felt second-best.

“I competed the most in activities where I could beat my brothers, where I could get the most strokes from others.”

Jill Grey, a family and marriage counselor in West Los Angeles, says an individual’s early experiences go a long way in determining his or her competitiveness level throughout life.

“It comes from a person’s upbringing,” she says. “What kind of messages they get from their parents--they carry those with them. After that, in order for them to feel OK about themselves, they have to be on top. If it goes too far, it’s not healthy.”

Sometimes, it’s unhealthy just to be around ultra-competitors.

Zobrist took up golf as a teen-ager, entering local tournaments. During one event, he nearly cold-cocked a tournament official when, after missing a three-foot putt, he smacked his golf ball off the green. It went airborne, striking the official--who was bending over--on top of his head.

Zobrist was promptly thrown out of the tournament.

Years later, after he had taken up mountain biking, he and his brother were flying down a desert road near Las Vegas, competing as usual. As his brother strained to catch Zobrist, the brother flipped his bike and punctured a lung. A passer-by called 911 and a helicopter took him to a hospital.

“The Flight-for-Life saved him,” Zobrist says, shaking his head. “He nearly died.”

Still, Zobrist’s competitive thirst wasn’t slaked. He finished at the top of his class at the USC Law School, founded his own law firm, bought numerous businesses, got into world-class marlin fishing and calls his family life terrific.

He discovered nirvana, right?

“He’s probably happy,” says Dr. Roderic Gorney, adjunct professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at UCLA, after hearing Zobrist’s story. “But, to this day, he probably has a gnawing feeling inside.”

Zobrist says he has found happiness, a measure of self-esteem, even a sense of humor about his condition. Strangely, though, like many super-competitors, he remains both a victim and benefactor of his competitiveness.

“I wish I could downshift now, but I can’t. There’s no way. Backing away (from competitive situations) still is very difficult for me,” Zobrist says.

He hesitates momentarily, then asks, “You want to go play golf?”

Crazed gladiators of any arena have nothing on Anne Schreick, 52, of North Hollywood. Sit down at a table to play bridge with the mother of two and gaze into the eyes of an assassin.

The 25-year veteran is a Life Master (bridge’s highest rank) who has won numerous tournaments and states flatly: “I hate to lose.

“When you don’t win, you feel so terrible,” she says, sending a warning flare to all future partners. “When you get beat and it’s your partner’s fault, you just want to kill them. I try not to be too vocal at my age. But, well, I yell at them anyway, ‘How can you be so stupid?’

“Sometimes you are more mad at your partner than at your opponent.”

Tournament bridge, according to Schreick, is no place for the timid: “People think . . . of four little old ladies sitting around a table, but that’s not what it’s like at all.

“I’ve seen people get very angry about losing. I’ve seen women cry. I’ve seen people accuse opponents of cheating. Once, I saw a guy punch another guy right in the face. He knocked him right off his chair. You’re very much on edge when you’re playing bridge. It’s not a social event, it’s a competition.”

Presumably, no guns are allowed.

Schreick, who says she is aggressive in other parts of her life, is single-minded about bridge: “I set out to win every time. That’s the name of the game. I’m not there to chitchat. The (opponent) is your enemy.”

Lance Pierce, a 33-year-old computer company manager, grew up in Orange County and has “attached” himself to, among other things, golf, basketball and software sales.

He traces his competitiveness back 20 years to nightly, and often bloody, one-on-one basketball sessions with his father.

“I just had to win or I felt like a failure,” he says. “My father was extremely competitive and my mom was a perfectionist. A competitor who wants to be perfect is a volatile mix.”

Frequently, the mix detonated. The frustration persisted and actually worsened in later years. During college, Pierce reached the nadir of his existence in an intramural league championship game that came down to two foul shots with one second remaining. If he made them, his team would win; if he missed, his life would plummet into living hell.

What happened?

“Well,” says Pierce, “I spent a couple of weeks with the devil.”

His friends, including his fiancee, Caryn, didn’t quite understand Pierce’s severe reaction. It was, after all, just a dumb game.

“I mean, it wasn’t for the national championship or anything,” says Caryn, who eventually married Pierce despite his behavior.

“But, for me, it was the national championship,” Pierce says. “And I lost it.”

In recent years, Pierce has found some perspective, but fires remain within: “To this day, the one thing I love is playing guys I don’t know and just taking it to them. . . . It’s really weird, but it’s very real.”

Such competitiveness has made Pierce not only an exceptional recreational athlete but a successful salesman as well.

“Sports and sales--they are the same,” he says. “If I don’t ‘win’ by making sales, I start to wonder if my boss and my peers think I can’t pull it off. I’m afraid of that. Maybe it’s a basic insecurity. I have to prove to them that I’m a decent individual. That’s a real driving force.”

In areas Pierce takes pride in, he says he simply will not accept failure. But, for all his victories, it’s far from bliss.

“The joy of winning (for the ultra-competitive) rarely matches the agony of losing,” says UCLA’s Gorney. “The agony of losing rarely is redeemed by the feeling that you might win the next time.”

Pierce admits as much: “I love to compete. But losing hurts a lot more than winning feels good.”