A lesson in losing: the secret of my dance success lay in an early setback.

In spite of some ego-deflating competition losses, I've managed to choreograph for an American Basketball Association dance team and dance in the 2004 NBA Summer Pro League and Super Bowl XXXVII. My competitive defeat taught me winning isn't the point. if you're open to the many pluses of competing, you'll walk away with performance skills and strength that translate offstage.

But before I'd learned those lessons, I danced, trained, and competed in a funky hip hop troupe named New Boom Squad. It was a spinoff of its more advanced sibling, Boom Squad; we were the youth ensembles at a serious little studio called Motion Pacific that was tucked against the blue skies of sunny Santa Cruz, CA.

Back then I floated from hip hop to jazz, salsa, tap, and eventually ballet, pointe, and modern. But hip hop and jazz funk were what I called home. Luckily, my being merely a dabbler didn't hold me back. My secret: I didn't even think about technique at the time, I just got lost in dance and the moment.

My early competition days were filled with the hip hop I loved. The troupe was extremely patient, and onstage we worked around each other's strengths and weaknesses. We'd get an adrenaline rush onstage in front of the bright pink, blue, and yellow lights, an emotional lift from the smoke and sequins. Sometimes a dancer just needs a little help from her friends.

After multiple wins a feeling of pressure began to envelop our troupe. We had to keep winning. Then we came in second dancing exactly the same piece that had earned kudos for the more advanced Boom Squad.

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Our choreographer was depressed by our defeat, although he acted like it was no big deal. It left me discouraged, too. While I dropped out of New Boom Squad, over time my passion for movement prevailed and I came to love other forms of dance.

I took a piece of wisdom away with me from those competition days: You don't have to be the most technically proficient dancer, just evoke the best dancer within yourself. And, regardless of whether you win, you will walk away with life experience and be that much stronger from surviving the inevitable first loss.

Because I kept at it and tapped into what I took from the competition world, opportunities like choreographing and dancing in NBA and Super Bowl shows became possibilities. Only a couple hundred dancers were chosen from thousands that auditioned for the Superbowl, but I was used to trying hard, performing full out, being ready to win or lose. I had developed some of the resilience that professional dance requires. Other opportunities began to surface as well, including moving to France to spend a year dancing abroad; coming to New York; and calling upon that inner dancer fortitude when I needed strength.

From that first loss when I was 16, I started a journey that left me the resilient 23-year-old I am today. Although I cannot credit all this to competitions, when fused with other challenging dance endeavors they molded the ambitious person I now am. I used what I had and rocked it, in dance and in life.

Jeanette Prather is a New York City-based dancer and writer.