Miles Byass is a U.S. Soccer youth national team player; a former Top 100 club prospect and a two-time member of the Discover Europe travel squad.

But in his first year at San Diego State, he’s started just one game thus far and has yet to record a point for the Aztecs who are 1-4-0 in the Pac-10.

He has a lot on his mind. This is Miles, unplugged.

What's the first thing to come to your mind when you think of pain?

For most people it’s some type of injury they suffered in their life. Whether it’s the pain of a broken ankle or the pain of a paper cut, people usually associate it with injuries. Every now and then there might be the hopeless romantic that associates pain with bad breakups and heartbreaks.

But in my mind, and the mind of most athletes, there is a pain much more intense than any pain from an injury or a broken heart.

The pain of losing.

Especially the pain of losing the game that was yours to win; when you give it your absolute all but still come up short. After the games there will always be your good friends and family there to comfort you and tell you how great you did and how you'll get them next time, but you don't even mind what they're saying. Your mind is wandering all over the place. You're still in the game mentally and you can't stop wondering that one question everyone asks themselves: "what if?"

What if that bad touch I took was a good touch? What if I took that shot a little sooner and a little more to the corner? What if I just dribbled by that defender and stayed calm when I had the breakaway? Would that have been enough to tie the game and hopefully raise my team to victory? Maybe this game was my fault. I mean, if I'm not happy with what I did and keep thinking of more things I could've done then I obviously should have played a better game, right?

Everyone will say don't beat yourself up about it, but do you actually even care if you beat yourself up? If you aren’t emotional about your loss, does that mean you don’t care enough? Everyone has those games they lose that don’t really matter to them - whether it be because of a hot date that night, or prom, or anything that was distracting enough to keep the game from being the most important event of that day, week or weekend. Does that mean that we don't have that one thing that all true winners seem to have? That "killer instinct?"

I'd like to think that I personally have that killer instinct and that winner’s mentality, but some days I'm just out of it. Does that mean I'm not a true winner?

In my opinion the pain of losing should always override the joy of winning. And I think every player should have to experience that true pain of losing; the pain of losing that championship game in the last second. The pain that can only come from a year’s worth of that winning joy; a year’s worth of work in the training grounds, and a year’s worth of feeling untouchable, unbeatable.

Every player should be left with the "what if?" question in their head. Every player needs that in order to be familiar with the feeling that stabs at your gut and your heart after a horrible loss. They need that and need to steer all that emotion and channel it towards working for that joy again. The pain of losing will always override the joy of winning because in the end everyone wins games and forgets them. It’s the games they lose that will stick in their mind forever.