Comments on: Winning, Losing, Praising

By: silvermine

silvermine — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 01:04:02 +0000

Hello folks, isn’t there a place in the middle here?

Winning is wonderful. It’s more fun than losing. Should every hate themselves because they lost? No! Is it a great chance to see what you might need to work on, sure! It can encourage everyone to work a little harder — nothing like a little competition to keep you on your toes.

Everyone should not get a trophy. Because shouldn’t ridicule the losers. It’s okay to lose. It’s more fun to win.

On rec teams, everyone should get to play. However, the better players are going to get to play more. In soccer, everyone had to play at least half the game. The stellar players played the whole game. If we were 3 goals ahead, everyone played whatever position we wanted to.

I want the parents to yell! Not yelling bad things… but help coach me. Encourage me! Tell me what I’m supposed to be doing! I started playing soccer as a 7 year old girl. I never even watch soccer, except my brother’s games. It helped if someone shouted that I should drop back. Or pass forward. Or look out for that guy who is in position to score.

How is this hard?

By: David

David — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 13:33:30 +0000

Great post! As someone who grew up playing sports, I hate to see kids taught today that winning doesn’t matter. When did winning become such a bad thing? As you said, you win some & you lose some. The important thing to keep in mind is that if you hate to lose, practice harder to get better. Once you enter the “real world”, everybody is certainly not placed at the same level of “it’s ok to lose”. Try selling that to someone whose job is sales!

By: Sharon

Sharon — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 11:36:56 +0000

If so many parents don’t think winning is everything, why is that we see on the news parents going to the extreme at sports contests. I would have to say most parents care about whether their kids win or lose. I personally, don’t think that’s terrible. I do agree with Shannon that they should play to win and do their best. I’d say maybe only the first 2-3 yrs depending on age should focus primarily on learning. By the time they are 7 or 8, they can understand that they need to do their best and that winning is one of the objects of the game. If they are on a team sport, it is not fair to their teammates if they are not putting forth their best effort. This doesn’t mean that losing is bad, it’s another learning experience. I think it’s when we equate losing with being bad that there are problems. That’s when cheating starts happening because we NEED to WIN. Losing should let us know that if we want to win, we need to work harder.
I also agree that at some level, children need to learn that they aren’t good enough to make the team. I was talking to a coach a couple of weeks back and he made a lot of sense to me. He said this business of not cutting players is hurting all sports. If players that aren’t going to see playing time are cut, they have the opportunity to try out other sports. They may find that they are more successful at something else. They also realize that if they really want to make that team, then they need to work harder.

By: Angela, Mother Crone

Angela, Mother Crone — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 12:39:44 +0000

I got back late, but I wanted to clarify something. I have older kids…12 and 15. I agree that young children (under 10) should be given the opportunity to play and learn the skills. However, when you join a league a game turns into a sport. A game is an informal situation, and it is unfair to confuse the two. If your child needs help with basic skills, sign them up with an instructional program with they YMCA to learn those skills.
My son, at 14, decided he wanted to play soccer for the first time in a league. It would have been unfair for me to put him on a team with kids who have been learning the game and playing for 8+ years , for both he and the other kids as their skill level would be far above his understanding and ability.
Kids need to learn to be honest about their abilities. You need no more evidence that society is crying out for this than to watch the auditions of “American Idol.” How many of those kids had parents telling them they were great? There is a huge difference between enjoying something and being skilled at it, and there is a place for both. But in a competitive team atmosphere, the focus is on competition and success. To say someone has a right to play on those teams despite having no skill is unfair to all, including your child.

By: COD

COD — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 13:12:30 +0000

Whether or not the talented kid scores has absolutely no bearing on his ability or worth as a baseball player. He is not being cheated out of anything if he is stranded on 3rd. There is no world series bonus check in youth baseball. If the kid’s ego is that tied up in beating down the opponent you have a parenting issue, not a coaching issue.

By: lance

lance — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 03:10:00 +0000

Who is looking out for the interests of the more talented kids? Or is everyone okay with their efforts often coming to nought because they can’t count on the weaker players to meaningfully contribute to the team? If a kid hustles for a leadoff triple, doesn’t s/he deserve better than to be followed by three sure outs?

Good coaches can and do balance the somewhat mutually exclusive goals of equal participation and the drive to win, but too many people treat ambition as at best a necessary evil and at worst a destructive impulse. If the strong players are given the message that other kids’ weaknesses deserve more consideration than their strengths, what will be their incentive to continue to try their best? (And if I weren’t going to sleep right now, would I rewrite this comment so that fewer than 4 of my 5 sentences were rhetorical questions?)

By: Sam

Sam — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 17:52:25 +0000

My oldest son plays AYSO soccer as will his brother in the fall when he is old enough. I will have paid the same exact amount of money as every other parent, and yes my child does deserve equal playing time. Are people here suggesting that even rec sports for children six to eight years old should require tryouts? Are you saying that I should keep my son out of soccer because sometimes he prefers to stop playing for a moment to be goofy with his friends?

I know that this isn’t what you are saying, but it is what I feel I’m hearing. To suggest that youth sports isn’t about winning is not also suggesting that winning doesn’t matter or that losing doesn’t hurt.

Life is not all about winning, and neither should youth sports be all about winning. In the drive to win, too many children are overlooked or are made to feel inferior. If we concentrate too much on getting our kids to win, then we lose so many opportunities for learning basic skills and having fun. The drive to win drives all the fun out of the game for too many children. As many of us are homeschoolers, we should recognize that our children bloom in their own way and their own time. The child picking flowers in the outfield today may be made to feel ashamed and may never play the game again, all because at seven years old someone denigrated him for making a team of children lose. This same child, given the time and care and understanding we so often espouse may go one to become a great pro player one day, or maybe he will just take the lessons he learned from youth sports, the lessons learned about teamwork and striving for your best, and take that in a whole other direction.

As a youth soccer coach, I will never coach my teams to win. I will coach them to learn the basics and to do their very best. They want to win without me having to hammer them to want to win, and if I do my job, if I give them my best as a coach and learn how to get the best out of each individual player/child, then we will win. We may not win each game, but we will win in life as we strive to do our best in whatever we do, a lesson learned in youth sports.

By: Trixie

Trixie — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 02:05:26 +0000

I don't see anything in Shannon's post that suggests she thinks team sports shouldn't be fun or instructional. Or that kids who have less interest, talent, or experience should simply "forget" about baseball or be banned from trying out the game. But I agree that a child should not simply be entitled to a place on a baseball team any more than a child should be entitled to a role in a play or a seat in the local orchestra. Little League is an organization that supports the learning, practice, and enjoyment of a competitive game. Anyone can have fun playing catch, batting some balls, or throwing together a casual baseball game in the backyard, much as anyone can have fun plunking around on a piano. But despite some parents' efforts to evade this obvious truth (though absolutely every Little Leaguer I've ever met knows it), the primary goal in an organized game of baseball is what it is: to score more runs home than the opposing team (just as the primary goal of an organized orchestra is not to have fun, but to perform harmonious music correctly and well). Such goals require effort, skill, practice, and dedication from team members. [And yes, there are smaller goals for individual players on a Little League team -- hitting the ball, running the right way, pitching through the strike zone, making a good throw, paying attention in the field, learning the rules, etc. But all these are goals only because they contribute to achieving the primary one.] Wanting one's child to earn his way into success in a team sport (or any endeavor) is not the same as being "cut-throat", nor does it translate into pressuring kids to perform or ridiculing them for errors or weaknesses. One can support and guide the efforts and interests of one's child and still convey the idea that merit matters. Since I know Shannon personally, I happen to know she doesn't push her son to practice or perfect his baseball skills; she's recognized his interest in learning to play the game well and allows him to make his own choices regarding how much time, effort, and dedication to put into this pursuit. But she's not going to tell him (or act as if) it doesn't matter how much time, effort, and dedication he puts into it, that he is somehow entitled to go as far in baseball as he wants even if he can't catch a ball. As for the rule Kerry regards so highly in her rec soccer league... if nobody cares about the score, why are they even keeping it? Ironically, the rule itself requires players to keep score... and even requires them to publicly acknowledge and label the "best" player(s)! And if winning barely matters (if at all), Kerry, why on earth isn't it any fun to be cremated? What difference could that possibly make to somebody playing only to "meet people, learn new skills, and have fun"? No, this rule isn't about keeping the game "fun"; it's about ensuring that everyone -- regardless of interest, dedication, effort, and talent -- can reap equal success. It's forced welfare, a hand-out, an evasion of what success actually requires. And it teaches players that they're somehow entitled to the benefits of others' interest, dedication, effort, and talent. I'm with Shannon; that's not a lesson I want my kids to internalize.

By: Shannon

Shannon — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 20:21:10 +0000

Carli – It also makes me think of the line from The Neverending Story: “People with no hope are easier to control.”

But that’s another post entirely.

By: carli

carli — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 18:18:50 +0000

This reminds me of a Principal Skinner quote from the Simpsons. Frustrated because nothing he said was right (or at least PC), he conceded,
“All I know is that no one is better than anyone else, and everyone is the best at everything.”

And also, a line from The Incredibles:
“If everybody’s special, then no one is.”