There are any number of cliched phrases to sum up the lesson I want you boys to learn today. I’ll resist enumerating them and settle for the one that came to mind this week: play to the whistle.

Recently, we have gotten better and better at analyzing predictions and planning appropriately. Data scientists and computer programs can digest a pile of data points and extrapolate the most likely outcomes: political campaigns, pop song construction, and especially sports.

It’s never been easier to accurately predict things. And each prediction enables people to work smarter not harder. Each analysis allows us to conserve our energy and craft support for ourselves.

But all those predictions come with risk. Complacency. Indifference. Defeatism.

It’s tempting, with our increasingly accurate prediction models, to assume there’s nothing to be done. To accept that, as probability approaches 100%, we might as well move on. To believe, in short, we can’t fight the math.

We forget among all these likely outcomes that humanity is the least likely outcome of all. Scientists tell us that the odds are heavily stacked against a planet being habitable, and even more heavily stacked against life evolving. Yet, here we are.

The same is true in these statistical models. Sure, the favored candidate, or likeliest cord progression, or most obvious final score might be the actual result. But we still have upsets, and innovations, because some people keep trying. People like Ross County’s Billy McKay.

There’s no secret to their surprising successes. They fail more often than they win. Yet still they try, and try, and try again. They go until the last vote is cast, or chord is played, or whistle is blown. They try every day and–eventually–it becomes habit.

When you build the habit, and you live with it daily, it makes the chance of a turn around more real. No matter how often it doesn’t work, it makes those moments of defying the odds richly deserved and deeply satisfying.

So play to the final whistle boys. Today, tomorrow, from here on out. Play to the whistle and even when the odds are stacked against you, you’ll have shortened them, just by being you.