Perth Lynx coach Ryan Petrik has declared he will keep fighting until he wins a WNBL championship, after re-signing with the club on a multi-year deal just months after losing his third grand final in five seasons.

Petrik already holds the record for the most games as a Lynx coach and the most wins too. But while he’s been tantalisingly close to winning the club’s first championship since 1992, those seasons have ended in heartache.

Petrik and the Lynx were close to signing a new contract during the finals and he said there was no way he was going to let emotions stop him from chasing the dream.

“It’s painful at the time but I would rather be in a nursing home when I am 90 feeling glad that I didn’t quit and kept persisting than wondering what might have been,” Petrik told The West Australian.

“They’re bloody hard to win. Success courts failure. If you’re going to chase success and chase being the number one team in the country, there is going to be some pain in that process.

“I watched the Masters documentary with Rory McIlroy and it showed the number of times he got painfully close, but failed and failed and failed. Then he won it, and then won two in a row. Had he quit half way through, he wouldn’t have won the whole thing.

“Michael Jordan couldn’t get through the Pistons. If he had quit, he wouldn’t have become Michael Jordan. Sport is littered with that type of stuff. Look at the Fremantle Dockers now. They’ve been hitting a brick wall forever but now they are up and going. If you quit, you will never taste the ultimate success.”

Petrik has worked hard to build upon the club’s history during his time as coach. But he is reluctant to use the championship drought as his primary motivation.

While he loves the romantic side of sport when he’s watching as a fan, he understands his job is to steer clear of emotion and just build a strong team.

Petrik is about to live his own fan experience watching the NBA but said he can’t fall into that trap as a coach.

“I’m a massive New York Knicks fan and they’re about to play in the NBA finals against the Spurs. The Knicks haven’t won one since 1973. So the ability to be the first club in forever to have won it is really cool,” he said.

“But, we can only worry about our place in time instead of the thinking about the annals of history. I understand what it means to win having not won one for however long and I get the romantic part, but the reality is we just have to play each season as it comes.”