It’s How You Play the Game: The Fate of Western Civilization and Grade-School Soccer
It‘s something of a stretch to compare a soccer game among eleven-year-old boys with the fate of the democratic world, but I’ve always managed to see big issues in small things.
My son is playing on a local soccer team which has lost every one of its games, often by humiliating scores. The coach is a nice guy, but seems an archetype of contemporary thinking: he tells the kids not to care about whether they win, puts players at any positions they want, and doesn’t listen to their suggestions.
He never criticizes a player or suggests how a player could do better. My son, bless him, once remarked to me: “How are you going to play better if nobody tells you what you’re doing wrong?” The coach just tells them how well they are playing. Even after an 8-0 defeat, he told them they’d played a great game.
And of course, the league gives trophies to everyone, whether their team finishes in first or last place.
I’d even seen an American television documentary about boys and sports which justified this approach, explaining that coaches were doing something terrible by deriding failure, urging competitiveness, and demanding victory. So were the kids really happier to be “relieved” of the strain of trying to win, “liberated” from feeling bad at the inequality of athletic talent?
Or am I right in thinking that sports should prepare children for life, competition, the desire to win, and an understanding that not every individual has the same level of skills? A central element in that world is rewarding those who do better, which also offers an incentive for them and others to strive, rather than thinking they merely need choose between becoming a government bureaucrat or dependent.
The playing field was perfectly even, but the boys were clearly miserable. They felt like losers, their behavior rejecting the claim that everything was just great, or that mediocrity was satisfactory as long as everyone was treated identically. They knew better than to think outcomes don’t matter. In a truly sad gesture, one boy had suggested before still another losing game that they form a circle, put their hands in, and cheer themselves: “Like the good teams do.” Halfway into the season, the kids had even chosen a nickname for the team that expressed their sense of being weak losers.
When the opportunity came to step in as coach for one game, I jumped at the chance to try an experiment. I’ve never coached a sport before, and am certainly no expert at soccer despite my son’s efforts. Still, I thought the next game could be won by simply placing players in the positions they merited, and motivating them to triumph.
For the starting line-up, I put the best players in and kept them in as long as they didn’t say they were tired or seem fatigued. Of course, I adhered to the league rule that everyone play at least half the game, but I didn’t interpret that to mean that everyone should play precisely the same amount of time.
I didn’t put terrible players in at forward or in the goal. It didn’t take any genius to do so, just basic sports common sense. You don’t need Ayn Rand to tell you which way the wind blows.
Before the game, I gave them a pep talk, with the key theme as follows:
Every week you’ve been told that the important thing is just to have a good time. Well, this week it’s going to be different. The number one goal is to win; the number two goal is to have a good time. But I assure you: if you win, you will have a much better time!
Sounds like a little bit of the mojo that made the original “Bad News Bears” one of the greatest American movies ever.
I’ll agree that the original is one of the greatest American movies, but I think you’re forgetting the movie.
The team itself is created by the local little league at the behest of a City Councilman threatening legal action. Kinda like affirmative action. These kids just weren’t up to snuff to compete it took a lawyer to get them on the field.
Buttermaker brings in two ringers who dominate the play and the team starts to win. They make it to the championship where at the last moment, Buttermaker realizes he has become too much like the winning-obsessed League coaches and throws the winning game by letting the bench-warmers play the field.
It is the antithesis of everything the author seems to believe in this article and probably in some ways this film is responsible for a lot of the anti-winning attitude that surrounds child athletics.
You’re leaving out very important movie details. The 2 ringers efforts lift the team as a whole, and they become a much better team as a whole.
Wait, wasn’t that “The Mighty Ducks?”
I love this article. I’ve been there and done that. I coached a grade school co-ed soccer team back in the ’80′s. Actually some of the girls were better than some of the boys. So we played our best players in the game. And we played to win. There was none of this no keeping score nonsense to preserve “self esteem” like you see today. And make no mistake. Some of those little girls could pull off a clean tackle without drawing a penalty better than some of the boys.
Soccer has never taken hold in this country, and if it is played the way Mr. Rubin describes it, small wonder. I coached little league (10-12 y.o.)and while the kids were there for a variety of reasons, while they were there, they wanted to do well.
Inculcating the will to win is not incompatible with nurturing, building skills and teaching sportsmanship.
I remember one game, early in the season, when my team of cast-offs(the common fate of a newly created team) was listlessly going through the motions. The bottom of the order was leading off, a nice kid who rented space in right field and contemplated dinosaurs and clouds. he wasn’t tearing up the league at the plate, either.
I got down to eye level with him and told him we needed a hit. Quietly, I used a few adult words in describing how i wanted him to address the ball-what he was to do to it. His eyes popped open. It was probably the first time an adult had spoken with him using adult language. Not chastising him, mind you, exhorting him. He stood in at the plate, ran the count to 3-2, fouled a couple off and then hit a single.
Our only girl was up next. Same pep talk. She got a hit, also her first of the season. First and second, nobody out.
The boys in the dugout were in something of a panic. The irl had gotten a hit! Now everybodt was going to have to get a hit! Interesting dynamic.
14 batters came to the plate that inning, nine runs scored. Everyone got a hit. 12 kids who barely knew each other two weeks ago became a team that believed in itself and each other.
Winning is good.
Wait, are you saying you swore at the kids or that you spoke to them as in they were adults?
*if
“Soccer has never taken hold in this country, ”
With all due respect: Huh?
The World Cup just trounced the World Series in U.S. television ratings. The average attendance in MLS is on par with the NBA and NHL. Stadiums across the country are packed every summer for mere exhibition games featuring teams from overseas leagues. There are three 24-hour soccer channels on the American airwaves. ESPN dishes out big bucks for broadcast rights to the Premier League, MLS and U.S. national team.
The notion that soccer hasn’t “taken hold” in the U.S. is a massive fallacy, to the point that it’s actually kind of strange to see somebody say it. We’re not in 1985 anymore.
I would not compare an event held every four years with one held yearly. Soccer is the perfect liberal sport. A lot of going hither and yonder without much to show for it.
I believe that all kids should be able to play. This isn’t the NFL, etc.
We were better off before the adults got involved. Did you ever see a game that the kids ran that didn’t involve keeping score? At the same time, once the competition was over, we just did something else. Maybe the parents should stay home. They act as if the games are for them.
Ridiculous.
Soccer is neither a “Liberal” nor a “Conservative” sport. It is a great sport that is fun to play and takes a lot of skill like any other.
If you don’t personally like it that is fine. I don’t like basketball, I can still respect the skill of the players though. You just WANT to pidgeon hole the game into your nice neat little bucket, that is very small minded of you, something I’d expect out of a liberal, putting a label on something which makes it ok not to like it.
WTF?
Listen, bub – there is a difference between nothing happening and not seeing anything happen. Open your eyes – life is more interesting that way.
And, “the perfect liberal sport?” No sense in condemning a sport when you’re a non-athlete.
The cool thing about soccer is the movement and strategy off the ball. Americans, quite a few anyway, don’t understand this. This will change. There’s a reason it’s the world’s sport. We’re a young country. We’ll catch up.
And, more importantly, to the author . . . Nice job coach!
Soccer is neither conservative or liberal. It takes a lot of stamina to play for 90 minutes. Similar to chess, it takes a lot of skill to play and a lot of moves to “score”. Neither is fun to watch. The World Cup gets ratings because it’s only on every four years. Swimming and diving are fun to watch too during the Olympics…not every week. Exhibitions may do OK, but it’s more of a novelty than anything else.
We’ve got football, which sells out 16 stadiums a week. These games are eevets and Superbowl Sunday is a national holiday. That’s American exceptionalism. I don’t care if the rest of the world loves soccer and doesn’t get our football. We’ve got fat guys, short guys, skinny guys, and tall guys all on the same team with one common goal. There is nothing more American or more diverse. God Bless the USA!
Football hasn’t taken hold in the US. How can we tell? You call it ‘soccer’.
Which is short for Association Football, so as to distinguish it from the plethora of other “football” games (rugby, Aussie rules, GAA, and American football to name a few).
I’m an American who has played many of them, but my first love is soccer.
The World Cup, a joke at best, like soccer, trounced the series in ratings only because they used the world-wide ratings against American ratings.
I would say in life winning is very important, but not the most important thing. Life frequently hands us situations where we cannot win. Then the most important thing comes to light. In my opinion, the most important thing is to do your best; and if your on a team, to work with the team to ensure the team as a whole does it best.
If you can walk off the soccer field or the field of life knowing you did your best, then you are a winner. I remember coaching a soccer team and we played the league champions. Our team was in the bottom of the standings. We held them to a 1-1 tie. You can bet that every player went off that field feeling they had done something great. They had not won. They had done their best and it showed. They were bigger and better for giving their all. They had grown.
How often I have seen league champion teams that had these fatal failings: no teamwork, one or two great players who steal the show, weak players tossed aside and never given the chance to grow, teams that were stacked and their victories were just as hollow as the trophies for everyone. In real life you can’t always chose your team or situation; so you better know how to do your best and know how to get the best out of the team that you have.
A tie is like kissing your sister. Thanks, SVEN from Michigan replies to Sven777
All things being equal, if a girls team that played to win, even if they weren’t as physically good, played a boys team that got no ‘f’s on their report card, the girls would win. A good lesson.
Wait what? Please tell me if I’ve stupidly misread your post, but are you implying that a team needs a few “F” students to be competitive?
“Never getting an F” does not mean that you are a nerd = not sporting.
It means you go to one of those progressive schools who believe that ‘failing’ damages egos – and therefore awards even the worst efforts with a minimum pass for attendance.
Since this, like communism, encourages one to believe that someone who has worked hard to gain something is either ‘lucky’ or being treated better (given special privileges) – there is no incentive to succeed.
Oh, hooey! You don’t have to be a dumb boy to be a good athlete.
I was never into soccer, nor my kids, but one of my coworkers had daughters in soccer. He reported to me an interesting observation. He said that at the very young ages, in a co-ed league the girl teams would often, perhaps typically beat the boy teams. The best he could tell the reason was that the girls had an easier time playing as a team, passing the ball, etc, whereas the young boys were uncoordinated as a team, each boy individually trying to be the hero. He said that this win ratio went the other way for the somewhat older kids, the boys by then having learned teamwork, and their natural physical advantages tipped the balance.
1. You beat 10-year-olds, and you’re bragging about it.
2. Many years ago, the ancestors of the teapartiers (specifically, Birchers) compared football to free enterprise and soccer to how the EuroSocialists did things. This article isn’t an original idea; it springs from the same well as the others did.
3. In a game, nothing very serious happens to who are benched or cut. In real life – as distinct from delusional teapartier articles – those who lose out end up wandering the streets, living in unheated apartments (wondering why teapartiers cut LIHEAP), and worse. Teapartiers are only Americans in the the separatist sense (at that): they really don’t give a flip what happens to anyone else, even when what happens to others impacts their lives.
Oh my goodness – you really have no clue, do you? Because a group of people wants smaller government, believing that it will result in a more efficent government, they don’t give a rip about other people? Quite the “my way or the highway” attitude, eh?
“Of course, I adhered to the league rule that everyone play at least half the game”
That seems like a good rule to me for little kids.
Everybody ought to get a chance to play, get some exercise, etc.
OK, genius Surls, if everybody should get a chance to play, when do I get my chance to be a starting wide receiver in the NFL? The fact is, in real life, not everyone gets a “chance to play”. If that were the case, every no-talent in the audience should get a chance to sing at a Taylor Swift concert or start at QB for the NO Saints. Ms. Swift and Drew Brees worked hard and long hours, made sacrifices and choices to get where they are today. Instead, what should be taught to kids is that all of them have a different talent for doing something, not that they should get a chance (“just like everyone else”) to play a sport they suck at. If a kid sucks at soccer (and as is often the case, playing the game only because of the parents living vicariously through the kid), then there’s probably something else s/he could do well, like chess, cycling, swimming, poetry, art, debate, etc.
Ok, rockthistown, there is a BIG difference between highschool through professional sports and developmental sports. The author approached it in the correct manner, as was they way I coached, you lean on your good players while still playing your weaker ones. How can they get better if they do not play? How can they learn to love the game, which is a requirement for being a better player, if they do not get to play? Many weaker players become solid or even standout players after having been given a chance to play and develop. Practice only does so much, you need game experience to really grow. You sound like one of those parents who threaten to attack the refs in a peewee league who make a bad call.
How can they get better if they do not play?
I’ll answer that in just a minute, but first, I am not “one of those parents” who attacks the refs over a questionable call. In fact, my view is that even a bad call should be upheld b/c the refs are there, in the best position to see, to make the call. I stand by their decisions, I’ll be the first to defend them, and I’m not a huge fan of using video replays to overturn ref/ump calls. We are all human, there is a human factor in practically everything we do, particularly sports, and I can live with all calls the refs/umps make, good or bad.
Now, how can they get better if they don’t play? First, by working and practicing. Yes, I agree practice is not a game, but I’ve coached my daughter’s softball teams for going on 7 years now, and it is very frustrating to have kids show up for a 1-hour practice per week, when they and/or their parents have done no practicing at all on their own since the previous week’s game; they’d rather do other things. Then, to top it off, parents expect us coaches to turn their little darlings into star athletes in 1 hour per week, and I got news for ya: it ain’t gonna happen, and that’s whether we play them in a game or not. Then those same parents gripe the most when we lose, often b/c they didn’t work with their own kids to make them better players. Practices serve the same purpose as games: to foster growth, development and improvement, but if they’re not doing some practicing on their own, there’s not a whole we can do to make them better in 1hr per week. The kids who I’ve seen improve are the ones who either: 1. have (often older) siblings who practice with them; 2. have parents who understand the value of doing homework, both in preparation for practices and games; or, 3. kids who are truly interested in the game, are teachable (I’m sorry, but some kids simply aren’t teachable – I’ve seen it), AND who are willing to pry themselves away from the boob-tube for time enough to actually do the practicing.
The author is correct to say that we should be teaching kids the first goal is to win, and the second to have fun. If winning isn’t the first goal, then let’s eliminate the scoreboard, lie to them and tell them they’re all great and award equal trophies to everybody; in my view, that’s poor preparation for life, and probably causes them more harm than good. Anyone honest who’s ever coached a kids’ team knows that winning is the kids’ goal, even if they’re not told that. Even little kids understand the difference in winning and losing, and that winning is more fun than losing.
I am NOT saying that kids who pay to be on a team shouldn’t get to play at all; they should, no matter how bad they are. Game time is certainly important, as you say. Competition makes us all better. But we’re kidding ourselves if we think all these kids are going to grow up to be the next Michael Jordans, Joe Montanas or Cliff Lees. Dedication, hard work, heart, commitment, love of the pursuit and yep, a bit of luck are all necessary ingredients for success, in practically everything.
So you skipped reading so you could prove what exactly?
Flipside- if they’re holding open tryouts, everybody should get a chance to tryout for the team, with no prejudice. Talent and effort will show through.
He said it was a good rule at that age level. Kids who are weaker players should have the opportunity to improve if they are willing to put forth the effort. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team in the 10th grade because he wasn’t good enough. So don’t think you can recognize the top players as such when they are still children.
I coached my daughters in U-14 soccer. There was nothing that sickened me so much as the other coach’s kid(s), usually the best or one of the better players on the team, never coming off, when there’s five kids on the sideline’s waiting to play. The fact of the matter is that at the rec level, all the kids’ parents have paid the same amount of money for their kid to play. Why should some kids get a disproportionate amount of playing time to other kids? This is for fun, and playing is fun, but always play to win.
Exactly, unless you have an all-star tryout team all the kids should play and be developed especially when the kids are little. We have 3 boys, the oldest is a junior in HS. Some of the “super stars” he played with in kindergarten are so so now, and at least one kid who was pathetic in 4th grade will go to college on a D1 scholarship. The best teams develop all players and teach the kids to play like a team. The team that has a few superstars is very easy to beat – guard coach’s son and the game is over. The team that is taught to work together so anyone could score is impossible to shut down. Many coaches forget this, and their teams win until the 5th grade level and get overtaken in middle school.
So while I agree with the author about constructive criticism and teaching kids it is fun to win, youth sports should be about developing teamwork, character and helping kids understand healthy competition. Sometimes that includes encouraging weaker kids to work harder and contribute to the teams success, not just playing the kids who have physical gifts.
It’s amazing that a game played by children, intended to develop physical skills, teach teamwork and sportsmanship can be bastardized to represent a parents need to succeed through their children by winning at any cost.
Well, if you’re going to treat kids like pro football players, then do it.
Pay ‘em.
Until then, spare me your idiotic analogies.
He said in plain English he was talking about little kids. Why was that confusing to you?
I agree with him. Little kids need different lessons than bigger kids.
Wellington is supposed to have remarked (he was dead at the time, mind you) that the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton. Waterloo was the end of that era’s version of statism. No great nation can protect what it values without understanding that if you decide to fight, it must be to win. Generosity to the losers is the way decent peoples demonstrate their civility but fighting is how they demonstrate their conviction.
Many a cop, and every combat vet I’ve ever met, have said that there are no Marquis of Queensbury Rules in hand-to-hand combat:
You use every trick in the book to win, because defeat is not an option.
Games are not as demanding, but should reward excellent play with wins that you can be proud of, and defeats that you can build on.
To win is sweet, for it happens far too rarely in real life.
ummm, isn’t boxing a form of hand to hand combat? don’t marquis of queensbury rules regulate the sport of hand to hand combat? Just saying, maybe not the best turn of phrase old boy.
Well, old girl, on the battlefield to lose is to die, to be physically incapacitated., and possibly to end up as a prisoner of the enemy for who knows how long. Not so in the boxing ring, where the chances of getting hurt or killed are pretty slim. Hard to believe that there are people who do not understand the difference.
Wellington also said that the British army that fought at Waterloo was “…composed of the scum of the earth. The mere scum of the earth.”
Having coached Little League and having to deal with maniacs like Barry Rubin, I’m forever grateful that I grew up at a time when kids were free to play their own games, without grownups butting in. I remember my son, after we had watched the movie “The Sandlot,” asking me if that was how we played ball when I was a kid. When I told him that it was, he said, “Boy. That must have been FUN.”
My son and his friends had uniforms, manicured fields, and all the equipment they could want. But not, apparently, fun. By that measure, I doubt that privilege of gratifying Mr. Rubin’s ego and justifying his ideological fantasies would qualify.
They keep score. Trust me. While the league might forbid it, the kids do it anyway, and it is at every age. My 5 year old looked at the schedule on the fridge last year and said “Oh man we have to play team 4 again this week. They’re tough. They beat us 4-1 three weeks ago”.
Maybe if the adults acted like adults, they wouldn’t be getting shown up by the maturity and comprehension of their own little kids. They get it.
Right on. My 13-year-old is the jock in our family. It wasn’t until last year’s recreational basketball season that the league actually kept the score of the games…but since age 6 or so, there isn’t a single kid on these teams who hasn’t kept track of the score, his shooting/scoring statistics, and his team’s won-lost record. And for the younger kids, the refs would whistle infractions–such as traveling–and then give possession back to the offending team. Most kids were totally cognizant of the stupidity of it all.
I agree completely. Fortunately I’m too old to have been involved in organized youth sports when the idiotic idea of not keeping score took hold. Of course, it’s just the human competitive nature that all the kids will keep score in their heads. Not putting it up on the scoreboard won’t make the losers feel any better and giving them all trophies after the game will just render the award worthless. It’s a sign of the times we live in I guess.
I don’t know whether it’s true that Wellington said “The battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton”, but I’m reasonably sure that the concepts of teamwork, planning, and most of all aggressiveness and desire for victory that were part and parcel of sports in England back then probably helped.
This probably explains why modern-day “progressive” thought abhors that sort of sportsmanship. They want a totally non-aggressive humanity- so they can control same more easily.
I’m sure that Abd-al Rahman al-Ghafiqi (Governor of al-Andalus, and loser of the Battle of Tours/Poitiers’ vs. Charles Martel and the Franks on 10 October 732), and after him Napoleon, and after him You-Know-Who (the guy with the Charlie Chaplin mustache), would all have been delighted to face armies full of soldiers who had been taught that winning not only wasn’t important, but was probably just wrong.
BTW, that mother berating her son for being “too happy” he won was engaging in abusive behavior. (See “Toxic Parents” by Dr. Susan Forward.) She was also engaging in behavior described by Ayn Rand in “Atlas Shrugged”, which is more and more looking less like fiction and more like fact.
clear ether
eon
Actually old Chaplin-mustache-guy did have experience facing such an army – fighting for Fascists in Spain. He used them for target practice for the baby Luftwaffe and his nascent Panzer corps.
When you read some of Hemingway’s writings, hear ABBA singing “Fernanado”, and watch the original season Saturday Night Live players talk about Francisco Franco still being dead – you hear some of the reminders of that little remembered war where all the very same precepts of equality and friendship were the banner of an army that got slaughtered in the 1930′s.
The same sort of political stupidity played out in Vietnam and is killing our guys in Afghanistan now…*sigh*.
I’m not sure of your point. Sure, Germany used the Spanish Civil War as a Luftwaffe training ground but Stalin also used it as a test bed for some of the latest aircraft the Red Air Force could muster. You had both Fascists and Communists from all over the world fighting each other in what what was supposedly a “civil war”.
What would happen today, to a general who said “Americans love a winner, and detest a loser. That’s why America has never, and will never, lose a war, because the very thought of losing is hateful to an American.” We miss you George S. Patton, you wouldn’t recognize your own country today.
Sadly Rik, even in his day, Patton was seen as too brash for many. Remember even then, the anti-America crowd was well-entrenched in American political circles and policy. For all we’ve lived through recently is the continuation of a political chasim bust open in 1912. Fudemental different points of view on the role of Government, the rule of law, and the standing of America in the world. ( not to mention fighting to win, and keeping score in kids sports )
That is why the scenes in the movies, Patton, were accurate. The Germans considered him our best general and the role he played, commander of an army scheduled to invade the Pas de Calais, was so effective. Eisenhower was punishing Patton but the deception worked because he was so effective a commander. The Battle of the Bulge produced Patton’s counterattack, probably the greatest example of maneuver in modern war.
Actually, Ike knew the Germans would buy the idea that Patton had a real army and he understood why. That’s why Ike was an effective CinC of invasion forces. He gave Patton the Third Army for the same reasons.
Wayne, just a suggestion. Read “The Cypresses Believe in God”, written by an eyewitness to the Spanish Civil War of 1936, who writes from a Catholic, anti-communist perspective. Moscow controlled and directed the most powerful elements of the republican army, and the atrocities committed were unbelieveable. American reporting on the war was skewed to the left, as most NY intellectuals of the thirties were Marxists, as most people my age know. The fact that Hitler ans Mussolini backed the right wing rebels against the communists doesn’t change anything. After all, Joe Stalin was our ally in WWII, but that didn’t mean we were pro-communist. Remember, Franco refused let Hitler move gas and supplies through Spain to Africa. If he had, the Gerrman army would have been near impossible to defeat in North Africa. He had to resupply Gen. Rommel by sea and air, and GB and USA destroyed 90% of his resupply. Don’t accept the liberal spin on Spain and Franco without reading the other side.
I always thought that before he left that Senate hearing room back when he was launching the surge, General Petraeus should have looked the senators in the eyes and asked them, and compelled each one of them to commit to an answer, “do you want us to win?” To their dumbfounded looks and uneasy squirms he should have elaborated: “I think my men and the American people deserve to know that the politicians sending us on this mission want victory and nothing less.”
I believe that that ABBA song is set in Mexico, note the reference to the Rio Grande. It refers to a fictional war/battle, not to the Spanish Civil War and not even to the Mexican Revolution. purely fictional
Excellent.
More relevant than most realize.
An almost-perfect metaphor of what’s wrong with liberalism.
Barry,
No need to worry about reading too much into this. In fact, just the opposite. As some one said, “All politics is local”, so it is for society. For we are not a people who are simply part of a larger America. Instead, America is a collection of individuals who think and act like Americans. Or, at least we used to be.
Your little story is not insignificant, for it contributes to the body of knowledge that will become the chronicle of America’s decline.
I’ve coached soccer at the U-10/U-12 level for many years and have observed much the same. You can’t teach competitiveness, it comes natural, but you can sure beat it out a kid by repeatedly telling them that they shouldn’t want to win. It’s not only parents who reinforce this feel-good at failing and don’t try as hard as you can and if you do you’re still special, it’s the basis of modern school philosophy.
BTW, not that it matters to this discussion, but at this age group it’s better to play your weakness to the front and the inside if at all possible.
No, you’re NOT making too much of your little parable–it’s absolutely true. None less than Gen. MacArthur realized the importance of sports for building character traits that will carry over into other, more crucial areas of life. “Upon these fields of friendly strife are sown the seeds, that upon other fields, on other days, will bear the fruits of victory.”. I shudder to contemplate the fruits that will be borne from the seeds being planted in kids’ minds these days.
My children are grown now, but apparently in my town, the teams aren’t even allowed to keep score until the kids are around 10. It’s ridiculous. Like much other squishy thinking, it’s insulting. We’re telling the kids that their psyches are so fragile, they can’t handle the trauma of losing a soccer game, or the devastating news that they’re not the star player. Who says that most kids even WANT to be the star player? My experience is that most kids have a pretty realistic idea of their abilities. My 7 kids played lots of sports–they were decent players, but none of them were scholarship material. And that’s perfectly fine. Perhaps that’s the lesson they SHOULD be learning–that they’re NOT superstars, but that’s perfectly ok. It’s fun to win, and it sucks to lose, but, really, losing is part of life and it isn’t the end of the world.
This reminds me of the Israeli media treatment of a group of IDF soldiers who had just wiped out a gang of Palestinian terrorists. The soldiers had killed all the terrorists and had not suffered a single casualty, so they had a celebration and filmed it with drinks and cakes and dancing around. Boy did they ever get pounded by the Israeli media for their “insensitivity” and even the COS issued some sort of condemnation of the Jewish soldiers because the soldiers violated some IDF code of ethics or Jewish values by celebrating the death of our enemies. For Israeli Leftists, it seems our victories are to be mourned even more than our defeats.
Remember how Golda Meir so fatuously put it when she stupidly claimed that “we cannot forgive you (the Arabs) for forcing our sons to kill your sons.”
Ken, exactly!The Israeli leftist, multicultural psychotic media can’t tolerate Jew boys celebrating-yes, they should!!-enemy deaths. Nope, it ain’t nice, nor fair.
Well, phooey on them, Zionists are going to turn this around, one way or another, and will step on the leftists who stop us.
Can’t recall, was it Sayteret, Golani, Givati,etc, which band of brothers did the righteous deed?
“‘As I live,’ says the Lord, ‘I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked man, but in his conversion.’” That is why Jews should not be celebrating the deaths of their enemies, but there ought to be nothing against celebrating the fact that all their men came home alive.
“…And when the wicked perish, there is joy” (Proverbs 11:10)
Your quote concerns the wicked man who is still not beyond reform. But regarding those who are so deep in their sins that only a divine miracle of change of spirit can get them out, Jews are justified in celebrating their demise. The enemies of the state of Israel certainly qualify, as they have sunk to the depth of raising their own children on the heritage of suicide-murder.
And another thing, this is the same Golda who did not allow our guys to amass on the front lines in 1973 BEFORE the Yom Kippur 1973 onslaught! IF our enemies don’t kill us, our leftist, addled leaders will!!
The mother who derided her son for being too happy about winning is showing a similar fear that the Israelies do of envy. Being successful is considered dangerous by many because it might invoke the envy of others. This contributed to the pogroms against the Jews in Europe, so I suppose that is why Jews today want to keep a low profile.
I am much in favor of IDF soldiers killing terrorists. I see no harm in celebrating a mission successfully carried out without loss. And I despise soccer coaches who pretend you can have fun without trying to win.
Nevertheless, the original Golda Meir quote is a great statement:
“When peace comes we will perhaps in time be able to forgive the Arabs for killing our sons, but it will be harder for us to forgive them for having forced us to kill their sons. ”
She had no illusions about her enemies:
“Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.”
“Why should Western democratic societies abandon the techniques and thinking that have led to such great success, in order to embrace failure as glorious or victory as shameful?”
Because that’s what you get when socialism takes over a nation. The European socialist nanny states are very happy to be living as economic basket cases and have embraced their mediocrity. Until they get rid of this attitude, they will continue their slide into an economic abyss where there will be no hope and the same crappy government-run services for all. And to think, idiots like Obama, Reid, and Pelosi think that this is the economic model that’s needed in our country. They almost got their way until this year’s election. Now the Tea Party activists and the conservatives have shown that we do NOT want to be on the losing team because Americans are NOT losers. We are winners. We have always admired winners and wanted to be winners. The politically correct way of doing things will only hurt future generations of Americans and, if last week’s election results are any indication, the United States has finally woken up to this fact. The American people are rejecting socialism and want to win again.
It is apparent to everyone, but the deaf, dumb, blind and willfully deluded that two main components will kill western civilization-submission to Islamic sharia via terror, and PC multicultural psychosis.
While it is a fanciful daydream that parity and harmony will prevail over mankind, it has been proven, again and again, that it will NEVER happen, while millions die in the process of this hallucinatory hope.
So, it is no surprise to read that Barry Rubin’s soccer playing son is being led by an indoctrinated, albeit well intentioned coach.Not by a coach who will teach excellence in skills, teamwork in spirit, and life’s invaluable lesson that ALL is not equal, but instead by one who imbues his charges with false expectations. That every player is equally skilled, every player is deserving of a prize, and competition is a BAD thing.
Therefore, it should come as no surprise that the dumbing down of generations to come is afoot. Where outstanding students are told not to show off their excellence,lest they outshine their peers-by the bye, cruelty to the high achiever is not seen as a negative.
Life is surely not fair, for if it was, my sons would be as talented jock-wise (though they always enjoyed competitive sports)as they are academically, bringing home trophies in both. Silly me, it never occurred to me to complain to the coach over ‘parity’.Mea culpa, my progeny.
To wit, the death of western civilization is set on its course, just as long as we raise namby pamby kids, afraid to be knocked about, only to stand up again,stronger and prouder than before.
To conclude,is it ANY wonder that these soft jelly parents and their offspring are terrified of standing up for western values and its Judeo/Christian underpinnings-alas,they intone, it wouldn’t be ‘fair’ to the rest of the world.
G-d protect us from the deluded in our midst!
Good article. I’ve seen this same silly conduct over and over in kids’ events. Frankly, the adults who promote the ‘losing is good’ philosophy should be far removed from interacting with any children. I think this is just one more way to emasculate boys and to dumb down the spirit of competititon and excellence. Isn’t this a pathetic route for a nation to take?
That mother who was berating her son for being too happy about winning should be arrested for child abuse. The kid has a better grasp of human nature than she. Rubin has clearly illustrated the weakness that permeates the thinking of Western people who don’t see that others in the world are successfully exploiting.
This is a microcosm of the socialist-statist mentality; that the equality of misery is better than the inequality that is life. The collective over the individual.
The soccer game you coached is more important to the lives of these kids than you realize. I hope it sticks in their minds for they will be better for the experience, and better equipped to realize the lies of liberalism that they will be exposed to going forward.
Seeing major things in seemingly small ones is an analytical gift. The goal of sparing feelings at the cost of winning is one of the many political correctness cancers working its way through our system. We’ve reached the point where the gay agenda that dominates our popular culture and compromised our political, educational and legal institutions (not withstanding the defeat of the three Iowa judges who discerned a right in the Constitution to homosexual marriage) stands on the brink of gravely damaging our military. If children don’t play to win in sports they will as adults submit to enemies raised in less understanding environments. The British discovered this long ago on the playing fields of Eton.
I played soccer in hs and college and semi-pro. I’ve coached teams of girls and boys.
I can rotate players so all get fairly equal playing time an STILL BEAT ANY OF YOU JAKES who insist on playing ‘your best players’ the whole freakin game and benching the weaker players for practically the whole game. I despise any complete a-hoes of a win-at-all-cost coaches who bench weak players the whole game or only play them when your team is ahead. MY TEAMS ARE GOING TO UTTERLY VANQUISH YOU.
Did I make myself clear?
And do you know why MY TEAM will beat your mob of idiots?
Because we work on skills and how to play the game. Position, position, position. Set up, set up, set up. Pass Pass Pass.
How can you develop your average players into stronger players without playing them? How can you develop your strong players into exceptional players and player-coaches unless you pull them out during the game and review right then what they did and what they might have done, or could do differently?
I’ll leave the win-at-all-costs travel team coaching to the travel team coaches while I’m coaching a rec league.
IOW, you are a win-at-all-costs coach…a win-at-all-costs all-the-time coach, the exact opposite of Mr. Rubin’s son’s coach, who does not develop his players, does not discuss what they do right or wrong, but merely stands on the sidelines and tells his players, “Have fun, kids!” whilst they’re being trampled into the mud by…say…your team?
“Coaching” is what you do in practice. “Managing” is what you do in the game.
I have been coaching youth soccer for more than 3 decades. Except for an occasional learning moment, it is impossible to “coach” during a game. All the coaching is done in practice. The game is just the opportunity for the players to show what they learned in practice, and to apply those new skills they learned in practice outside of a drill situation.
Mr. Rubin’s son’s coach was neither a coach nor a manager. I saw nowhere in the article where he actually taught them any soccer skills. But he had a clear notion of whose skills were “better” and whose were “worse”, and managed his players so the better and worse all met some arbitrary clock amount. When Mr. Rubin took over, he didn’t coach them either. He just scheduled them differently.
The kids were not coached in either case. They were just managed in two different ways.
Which is why bvw’s team kicks butt. He coaches them in practice, and manages them during games. They improve their skills in practice and hone them during the games. There is no point where he is trying to make them feel better. They just naturally do because they are improving themselves.
As a parable about managing resources, this article is great. As a parable about coaching children, it’s pointless.
This article is not about coaching children or managing resources. It is about attitudes towards winning and losing, success and failure. It is about attitudes towards hard work and achievement.
Agreed. But my years of experience have shown me that attitudes towards winning, losing, success, failure, hard work, and achievement are beyond the scope of youth sports coaches, except in very rare cases. Those attitudes in a child are based strongly on family upbringing and the individual’s personality. The impact a youth sports coach can have on them is basically zero (or nil, if coaching soccer
.
I guess you could say he was trying for a metaphor that shows how attitude can affect outcome (“What you manifest is before you”), but this particular example — where managing the strengths and weaknesses of the resource pool led to a new outcome — doesn’t make for a very strong metaphor.
Do you somehow see any parallel between the team described by Mr. Rubin and your fantasy league team THAT WILL VANQUISH US BECAUSE WE’RE IDIOTS? Or are you arguing with the voices in your head?
Obviously you have a lot of anger and hatred and have decided this is the appropriate venue to express it. Thank you for sharing. And maybe you could cut down on huffing spray paint.
“. . . perhaps not too much should be read into this little parable.”
In fact, the opposite is quite true. This little parable distills what is fundamentally wrong with the festering socialist philosophy of forced equality.
It is a shame that the one boy’s mother was on him about being happy his team had won. . . . sounds like the typical yuppie mom steeped in the values of Oprah and feel-good liberalism. . . .maybe the author could push to be the team coach next year. . . .
Soccer is a sport that represents the worst of left wing psuedo-egalitarian thinking. You can’t take your son’s coaches attitude in football or hockey. Kids not only will become demoralized and indifferent, they will get hurt. In North America’s most physical games the participants learn to do their best because there are real consequences to failure that go beyond the score.
Soccer is popular because it takes less skill then baseball, football,hockey or basketball to learn how to play and is considered “safe” by over protective parents. It is a perfect “girls” game that feminizes boys. If you want your boy to grow into a well balanced young man then keep him away from “futball.”
[Before you soccer defenders jump on me for knocking the skill level of the game I am not talking about the higher levels of the sport. Most players never get there. I am talking about youth sports. Any 7-16 year old can run and kick a ball. Very few can skate with proficiency and handle a stick at the same time, hit a curve ball, consistantly make a jump shot, or throw an accurate pass.]
Be sure to call David Beckham and tell him all this.
Reading is fundamental.
Even to be able to think on your feet, you have to first master the fundamentals. Good luck.
Smitty:
Do you read above the third grade level?
I wish there were a way to jettison morons like you from areas where you become associated with conservatism, people like you make easy bogeymen for the lefties to capitalize on.
Is that you Moby?
I always get a kick out of people who defend soccer. Every time I see some Eurostar feign an injury in a match I want to puke. In hockey that gets you 2 minutes in the box for unsportman like conduct and the contempt of fans an players alike. Soccer players even at the professional level are little sissy drama queens. During last years Stanley Cup finals Duncan Keith took a puck in the mouth, lost seven teeth and didn’t miss a shift.
So, soccer for kids is safe. Don’t be an idiot. What is “safe” is a 10 year old wearing a helmet and face mask twice the size of his head, shoulder pads, thigh pads, etc. to the point he can barely run, much less tackle someone.
Jarmo:
It is you who are being an idiot. You know that the perception of soccer is a as a non-contact sport where the kids “can’t get hurt.” You also may know that there are a lot more serious soft tissue injuries in soccer then in Football and Hockey. However, the reason for the overall lower injury rate in Football and Hockey is because of all the padding. These are contact sports and with out the protection the games would be a trainwreck full injuries.
My observation has been that even when the adults don’t keep score, the kids do.
What the liberals who espouse this view of not worrying about winning or not are doing is training good little serfs. I was taken out of a game of Little league baseball when I was young so an older player would get a chance to play. He missed a tag or something I don’t remember exactly but we lost the game because he missed. I still remember 50 years later that I was a better player than him and we might have won the game if the coach had left me in. I never played baseball again. I never saw any point if the coach didn’t care if we won.
Beside that point, if it really doesn’t matter if you win or lose, why do the democrats cheat so much trying to win???
my daughter played on a team with a similar philosophy. They went winless for three years, hearing after each game how good they had played. This dispirited her so badly that she dropped school sports altogeter 5 years ago. She was not one of the better players. But the same group of “loser girls got rehabbed by some “real coaching” and have gone on to win championships at the state level in other sports. they’re much happier as is my daughter who has become one of they’re trainers
Two points, if I may:
I have two girls playing U13 and U14 competitive soccer in a very competitive and highly successful league in a Florida city that also has recreational soccer teams (I once coached there) pursuing winning as well, but under far less competitive conditions. All of the girls (in both competitive and rec soccer), their coaches, and their parents, are there to win. So, it seems likely the author’s case could be an isolated one; I wonder if he lives in a very blue State/environment.
Now the bigger point: the author correctly identifies the lack of a drive to compete and succeed, especially among the young, in some sectors of this society. I used to teach Graduate courses at a State University in the Mid West, and was struck by the fact that otherwise very bright, intelligent non-minority American students would not show a drive to excell in class almost by design. Instead, the drive to come in first and succeed was shown by foreign students, especially students from Asia.
So, case #2 points to a sad and indeed not boding well condition, as the author points out, for the West, but not overwhelmingly so as my case #1 points out – not now at least. Maybe, it’s just a dent and not a long term trend yet. I certainly hope so.
“very bright, intelligent non-minority American students would not show a drive to excell in class almost by design.”
This is what happens when you create a society where “non-minority”(read: white)students that are intelligent can look around and see an incompetent like Obama take their spot at Columbia because of his skin color. Why the f*** would I bust ass just so that an inferior mind with the proper coloring can take my slot in grad school to fill a quota?
Bingo.
Is this some kind of a joke comment? The post above Blah’s argues that white students in the midwest are getting their lunch eaten by hard charging, smart, hardworking South Asian (non white) students and that their response is to do nothing and stop working. Blah’s response is that being lazy and refusing to work is the rational response to affirmative action? How many slots are held open at Harvard or Harvard Law for non white students without good grades? You people are so far from excellence that you have no idea how the admissions process works at a truly competitive, elite, school. I can assure you that the number of white and non white students who are willing to work hard for those top slots (and to have been Editor at the Harvard Law Review you have to have been the top of the top) is in the hundreds. Hundreds per space. If my white highschooler ever told me she slacked off at work for fear that someone else would get cut a break I’d tell her to get her ass back in the chair and work even harder. How dare you people even talk about being conservative? If you don’t get to win your sports games, or get all the seats in every class regardless of merit, you bitch that the whole game is rigged against you by affirmative action or the other kids on the team. What a bunch of wimps.
Lazy white kids from the midwest who are satisfied with not bothering to study because they fear that some black kid from the projects is going to outwork them? They would never have made the cut. Bitching about how other people are getting ahead unfairly instead of working hard at your own job for its own sake and because of your ambition seems pretty pathetic. But go ahead and blame obama and scholarship kids the world around because they still are willing to work hard to get ahead. If it makes you feel any better.
aimai
“One shouted from the sidelines something I thought showed real character: “Don’t let the good players do all the work!” Instinctively, he recognized that some players are better, but he wanted to bring everyone’s level up rather than down. I’m tempted to say he was going against what he was being taught in school.”
Exactly! We work together to BRING EVERYONE UP! Something many in the world fail to grasp. United WE STAND! It goes with our once national character, yes, we fight to win (games, wars, whatever) but we also believe in each INDIVIDUAL doing their best, and doing their best together.
A good game is one where everyone worked together and the scores are close, not where one team has “team-work” and another team is a bunch of people that cannot work together.
Ole_Sarge, your post is worth 2 RBIs.
Totally agree: learning how everyone does their best together is a critical part of the value of sports. You’d think there would be more recognition of that.
“…why should Western democratic societies abandon the techniques and thinking that have led to such great success, in order to embrace failure as glorious or victory as shameful?”
Speech writers, pundits, and politicians are going to be borrowing this quote. Can already hear this on the coming election trail.
“… that one should apologize for winning.”
I joined an intramural soccer team back in the 1970s. None of us had had much experience playing soccer, and we often played against foreigners who had been playing since the age of three, so we were beaten badly quite often. After losing a number of games, we finally won. Was I happy? Sort of, but I actually felt guilty about it.
However, I quickly got over my guilt. Winning is better.
We’ve been aware of this for a LONG time and we don’t like it.. When they get to high school, they WON’T play if they aren’t good, they will be shocked when that happens, it isn’t all for fun in hs. Maybe it’s the dumbing down of boys that is really going on, they have been doing that in schools for a long time. Our great school system, NOT..
with some of the sports analogies being used on the battlefield, i guess second place is a body bag. i like Patton and Lombardi’s way of thinking.
I, too, had the experience of coaching 8 & 9-year-olds, except it was in full-contact football (the American kind, not what much of the rest of the world calls “futbol”). At the outset, there was only one little Hispanic girl who wanted to play. None of the other coaches wanted her at the team draft, but I took her on without question as well as a little, mildly physically retarded boy who looked too small even to play in THIS league. We played to win…every game. I didn’t chew the kids out when they made mistakes, but I did show them how to NOT make that same mistake again, and the only game they lost that season was to a team with a TERRIFIC young running back who went on to play Division I football for TCU as a wide receiver a few years later. That young man came up to me at the end of the season and said, “I sure wish I’d played on your team, instead.” My little girl player was put at right guard and proceeded to push opposing linemen all over the field and my tiny player no one else wanted turned out to have a talent for sneaking across the line when the ball was snapped and tackling the ball carrier in his own backfield! He was absolutely FEARLESS!
Pappadave @22 — that’s what I’m talking about. The ol’ Dirty Dozen ethos, take all the broken pieces and make them a top contender.
Wonderful article, wonderful success for those kids–at least one time.
Parents, I think you have reason to fear that the same dumbing-down attitude is taking place in the academic classroom, where the stakes are a whole lot higher.
I teach high school (Latin), and was surprised and shocked recently to hear a number of colleagues (who teach English, social studies, and science) saying they thought it would be better for all students (and also fairer) if we eliminated the distinctions in level–in our system, it’s Honors level vs. Regents level–at which the courses are taught.
They quite sincerely didn’t think there were significant differences between the quality of work achieved at the supposedly higher level and at the more basic one; they also saw the ‘lower’ level setting as a dumping-ground for the students with special needs; in their minds, the ‘higher’ level was an enclave constructed for the socio-economically advantaged, with no academic justification.
Maybe because I teach a skills-based course (you can’t BS your way through a paper, in a Latin class! There are no papers–opportunities to spin together half-understood concepts and partially-digested ideas picked up at random, made to look good with rhetorical flourishes. There’s only translating a passage, which is either done accurately or not, or analyzing a word / phrase / grammatical construction, and once again, either you’ve shown that you understood it or you haven’t.), I really do see a world of difference between the Honors and Regents level. My colleagues who teach French and Spanish definitely see a gulf between what their Regents and Honors students achieve. I think the math teachers see it the same way, though of course I shouldn’t speak for them.
There are lovely students from well-off families who really don’t ‘get’ the difference between the active and the passive voice (in their own native language); if they are motivated and/or pressured at home to succeed, they will probably put in the work that will get them there (if they come in for extra help, they’re really going to make it). However, if they become indignant with me because they’re not getting an A (“I always get A’s in my classes!”), then sadly they’re probably not prepared to admit to themselves that they need extra help, or to work harder, or to start working more strategically.
There are also less-privileged students, including some students of color, who have an instinctual grasp for language issues; in some cases, finding out that they are personally talented at this not-easy stuff has been a big motivation to keep working and progress to the next level.
So, I ‘get’ the reason for the levels. I wouldn’t want social class to be the raison d’etre for them, though. I would definitely advocate raising the expectations for the higher level. It floors me to think that there are teachers who don’t see significant disparities among their students in respect to achievement; it almost makes me think they’ve eliminated anything hard enough to be called “achievement,” if they’re really not seeing anything.
I’m afraid of the fairness argument, though. Why should only the lower-end classes, where students are already struggling, be the only ones burdened with the added complexity of special-needs students? Why isn’t it fairer to spread that burden over all the classes more or less equitably?
Teachers these days need to be masters of delivering instruction at multiple levels simultaneously. That’s what my own teaching feels like, where I am trying to keep students going, whose talents put them at a spectrum within each curriculum level. I operate by the triage principle, so I spend the most time with the students who struggle the most. The most talented are the ones who can do the most without me. Some of them are capable of progressing through two years of curriculum in one, with minimal intervention from me, other than to keep them supplied with exercises, reading material, and tests.
In a microcosm, my classroom is like the whole system, these days–fairness and everything else tells us that it is the student who struggles most who needs the bulk of the resources focused on him.
I don’t mean to complain, though. My class, in fact, is an elective–anyone in it has actually chosen to be there. The tragic thing to observe, in education in the largest sense today, is that the biggest resources are being targeted to students who are truly reluctant to be there, and fight against attempts to educate them. I’m not suggesting that I know the answer to their plight; but I do see the rest of the system–comprising all the kids who can do better, and who actually want to be there–suffering as a result.
Liberals: There’re “no winners” because they’re all losers!
I have an earlier comment which also well-represents much of my attitude on this issue of coaching kid’s sports.
But there is more to say on the matter.
(1) Kids are much less likely to play sand-lot baseball on there own today. Part of that is because of bugger cultural reasons, but another part is because generations of ADULTS have so highly structured their lives and also our culture’s take on Baseball, from childhood to adult fandom. Did you see the World Series this year? At every game in the playoffs, nearly all fans wore the team colors. That was unheard of in 1927, and not that common even in the 1960′s. A culture of fandom. That’s what soccer is about in most of the World. Pro baseball is most like world soccer in that regard.
(2) The soccer played by 98% of kid’s teams in the US is nothing but mob ball. They have no idea of the structure of a proper soccer game. They being kids, coaches and fans. The parents show up to rally a mob. No wonder the winning travel team coaches focus on the few naturally gifted ball carriers and kickers. Ball carrying is way overrated as a soccer skill, fwtw. I suspect the long-term cultural impact of yelling at kids to do something without any idea of what is to be done besides a “kick it!” is not good.
(3) Baseball is a highly spiritual game, and very American. It is to my mind the ultimate expression of American ideals in sports. It has a LOT of structure, and is even Kabbalistic in nearly all of it’s aspects. But I am sick of the overdone FANDOM-ism of baseball, and the void that kids have for not playing sand-lot WITHOUT adult supervision any more in the US.
(4) Football and Basketball are also fundamentally AMERICAN sports, each showcasing some aspects of the American ideals and culture that are not well-covered by baseball’s higher spiritual plane of being.
(5) Soccer, as most folks point out, in rebuke or in regret — is NOT AMERICAN. It’s still a good sport, like wrestling and track and field. Or the hockey-type sports. Or tennis and the net sports. These are all WORLD sports, reflective of the common ideals and cultural abilities of all men.
(6) Rugby and Cricket are also not American, nor are they WORLD SPORTS. Maybe tennis should be included in this category.
(7) The Soccer fad will pass soon, I predict, the cultural wave in America will obsolete it. I HOPE sandlot baseball will return, and that MLB FANDOM-ism abate.
(8) GREAT Soccer playing kids “burn out” more rapidly in the US, often by High School, because of the obscene focus on them as “great stars” in our American kid’s soccer culture of mob ball and overbearing, incessant, loud, crass and stupid parental helicoptering, not giving the kids a minute to breathe without supervisory ‘brute chaos’ inflicted upon them in some ‘structured’ activity.
(9) Be good.
(10) Thanks for reading my rant!
Baseball and football have been played here a long time. Other than that, they aren’t really American. What’s American about letting one person (the pitcher or the quarterback) dominate the game? In terms of values, these are Asian sports more than they are American sports.
“Therefore, it should come as no surprise that the dumbing down of generations to come is afoot. Where outstanding students are told not to show off their excellence,lest they outshine their peers-by the bye, cruelty to the high achiever is not seen as a negative.”
There is more to it than that. The outstanding students CAN’T show how they are even if they wanted to or were permitted to do so. Oftentimes, Advance Placement classes get shortchanged on funding to the point they have to discontinue the classes. Or, the do-gooders step in and demand that the less-capable be placed in AP classrooms in the name of “fairness”.
What I find so GALLING is seeing taxpayer-funded schools with fancy locker rooms, expensive football fields, and fancy buses chartered to schlep the team from game to game because a standard yellow school bus is just not good enough for our young warriors. Meantime, the science classes lack test-tubes and chemicals; the pianos in the music department have not seen a tuner since the Clinton Administration; the biology class gardens are gone to seed for lack of funding.
I find the parents at fault in all this. They think nothing of launching door to door candy sales to support the team, but won’t lift a finger for what matters. Our nation’s future depends on science and continuation of our cultural heritage a darn sight more than being able to throw an oddly-shaped ball toward two pieces of wood at the end of a field.
At the High School level the parents foot much of those bills, not the school. At the college level, you wouldn’t have those science buildings if it weren’t for the huge money brought in by sports. That’s never going to change. The populace wants their entertainment.
Don’t kid yourself. The huge money brought in by a winning college sports goes right back into building the winning sports program. There’s rarely anything left over that’s put into less prominent sports, let along science labs. Here’s an example: the University of Washington’s ice-hockey team is funded by the players themselves. If Huskies football money can’t spill over to them, what makes you believe any coins roll somewhere beyond the athletic department?
The sports programs pay for themselves and throw off money to the general fund. They use all kinds of crazy accounting gimmicks to move money around, so it’s hard to follow what’s paying for what.
At my old high school the rule was that anybody could take a course at the Honors or AP level, but only those who were recommended for it could drop it if they found it to be too hard. So if you were told to take the parallel course, and you took the honors course (or likewise were recommended for honors and took AP), you did so at your own risk. They would not dumb down the course for you, and you were at a real risk of getting a bad grade (I’d be hard pressed to find anyone who failed an AP course, except for being caught cheating, but if you got a C, the damage was done, since there’s no honors weighting for a C).
Remember, liberalsm makes people stupid, and nothing is more stupid than ignoring reality (in this case the reality of different physical ability.)
I’m dying to find out what happened next, after the kids clearly enjoyed winning over losing, and everyone saw the difference it made without the sky falling. What happened when the coach found out that they won and they liked it. Aren’t there enough intelligent parents to form a league dedicated excellence, winning and fun?
I’m not a big fan of win at any cost attitudes in youth sports. I’m not saying you are pushing that, and I’m darn sure not saying that the goal of an organized sports team isn’t to win. It is, but the character building is in the effort.
My son plays on an 11 year old all-star baseball team. I like the coach, he works them hard at practice, but they don’t have the most exemplary record. One thing I was not fond of was the coach put them into really competitive tournaments. Sometimes against twelve year old all-stars. We even came across a cherry picked team that all the kids made the twelve year old cutoff, but most were thirteen by the time of the tournament. That fact that our boys held the score to four to one, was as you say, a heroic effort, but they were frustrated none-the-less. I was frustrated as well; looking at the opposing pitcher was like staring at a slightly smaller version of Randy Johnson.
So there is a point at which the game has to be fun, and the reward should be for hard work and perseverance, not just a “W”. I hate to use the same example two days in a row, but, do we mock the Spartans for losing at Thermopylae?
I coach youth soccer for my kids at our Catholic school. Before I started coaching, the coaches of the older kids were all exactly the same with the kids as you tell about in this article. Not a one of the kids in the upper classes was high school soccer material. When these other coaches saw how I pushed kids on my teams to work hard and listen to my analysis of their strengths and weaknesses, which led to two undefeated teams, they didn’t take too kindly to it.
I explained to them that no matter what the situation is, the kids keep score in their heads. The point is that the kids want to learn and it actually hurts their feelings when you give them false praise and leave it at that when they know they screwed up. They all try their best, but they know that it only takes practice to be better. Now we have seven kids that are potential high school soccer material. And I wrote a column about my kindergarten team, which actually made the other coaches lighten up a little. I often wonder at what age do kids in other situations start actually believing the liberal feelgood philosophy. They won’t under my watch.
http://www.chicagoparent.com/magazines/chicago-parent/2010-august/voices/my-life-dad-turned-coach-learns-valuable-lesson-on-the-field
A Catholic school, eh? Has anybody there found the scripture passage in which Jesus gives false praise? Well, they won’t because it’s not there.
Time and again the Pharisees are told that going through the motions doesn’t cut it. Rather, Jesus insisted that we up our game. The letters of the Apostle Paul have many allusions to competitive sports, nobody gets to sainthood by kicking back and not striving. (Pass the word on.)
I also wanted to add that it’s far better to try to bring everybody up to the level of those that succeed by asking that they work as hard or harder than to falsely prop them up and ultimately force the successors to come down to their level.
My Grandson plays baseball/softball and was encouraged to show me the medal he was awarded for the season’s end.
I made a big deal about his award but the boy, Godbless him said, “PawPaw, everybody gets one of these whether they win or lose or play good or bad ball.”
The award did not impress him or any of his team mates because it was just that an everyman award for showing up.
These kids are being taught the everyman is a winner and no losers theme but I’ve found the kids realize the whole thing is just bull to make their parents feel good. He hates to play but his Mom, the TEACHER makes him to teach good sportsmanship, winning isn’t in the program.
The kids ain’t stupid.
I forwarded this article to a fellow conservative friend and I liked his immediate response.
“I wonder what would happen if the kids were able to vote who should coach the team for the next season.”
I have coached (non-athletic) middle- and high-school teams for over 15 years.
I have NEVER coached kids who did not want to WIN. There were those who did not want to work; they were removed by the coach. There are those who will not listen. But after the non-listeners see the listeners’ results, they come around.
Not only do they want to WIN. As you observed, they revel in winning.
And they deserve it.
I think there is a happy medium: it’s true that when I was young many coaches (with parental approval) were horribly bad with the “win at all costs”, playing only the stars, and ignoring (at best) the untalented players. There was no bringing up the level of play for the team as a whole, and it fostered a cult of personality. This was not good, but it got over reported, and so it has now swung the opposite direction: trophies for everyone! touchy feely bs, and this is being over reported as being a good thing (in fact, it’s just as toxic and totalitarian as those bad old coaches and stage door parents — just as destructive to our children).
I’m glad my family has promoted riding, archery, schutzhund, cross country trekking, and riflery, and hunting. Even for smaller kids. You still have to live with a lot of responsiblity and consequences, learn to take control of yourself and your surroundings…something more kids don’t learn to do anymore, especially in the West.
In the world of sports, where men regularly seek glory the assassins operate night and day. In little league, trophies are no longer given to the winners. Trophies are given to everyone for participating. Dominating the opponent is no longer cheered; instead it is frowned upon (mercy rules). For the young sportsman who processes god given talent and a work ethic to train and improve his game will be marginalized. His opposing teammates who spent their same training time playing video games and eating an unhealthy diet will be given equal accolades. Glory is replaced by the malaise of marginalization.
http://mensdailyforum.com/content.php/146-Where-Men-Find-Glory
Then, teaching our children mediocrity is merely preparing them for failure in life. Mediocrity is what Communist system values are where academia (media and government) have been slowly pushing more of them on us and our children for at least the last five decades. This slow regression was the means Communists took over the agenda of the Democrat Party.
I highly suggest we put a stop to all of it, immediately.
A failure of the entire liberal vs. conservative/socialist vs. capitalist debate is that neither side is normally willing to truly observe the logic that is driving the other side. I don’t mean an analysis from your own positions scanning the opponent’s fields, but to actually put on the opponent’s mindsets (temporarily) and go through the steps of the other’s logic. When you do this you become closer to a neutrality in understanding motives. Liberals probably are competitive when it comes to organizing for common-external threats (or common themes), such as the decimation of the environment (or conservation). (Note, this is not a justification for how they go about their convictions, or if those convictions are correct in the first place as we observe them currently, but an equal application of logic minus societal variables.)
Perhaps, the problem is a culture with sports at it’s core, in which some people, not necessarily liking that “sport”, and not wanting to rock the culture-boat exercise their life philosophies inappropriately. It seems that the coach in the story should not even be coaching, but maybe reading to kids in a library, hiking, or something in this train. The problem, further, is that this latter activity is appreciated far less (emasculated) in society than running around kicking a ball. Why is that?
Sorry, I don’t offer a solution as I do not advocate experimenting with society, but only trying to say that it isn’t always right to conclude that the weak and/or ignorant are indeed weak or ignorant. When our society rewards (read: loves, admires) action-heroes over the acceptable peaceniks, and those peaceniks take to action-hero roles instead of their own, they ARE, in effect, competing. Note also, just as pacifists are weak in not leading and forging a society that rewards them adequately, the “strong” are weak and ignorant in their inability to create a society where appropriate adulation is put upon pacifists they live among, and arguably, need. Pacifists who, outcast from an internally competitive unreciprocating society, may spawn the seeds of tyranny, regressive or otherwise from the suppressed nature. Is it not fair to also think if the cultural tables were opposite that the minority action-hero-types would be prone to violence, or other form of lashing out akin to their nature?
One other note here is that I AM equivocating “pacifists” (probably a poor general term, because I mean it to include science-minded types, artists, orators, etc, and I have not explained that) with the “competitors” who get the full admiration of society. It is necessary to equivocate in order to eliminate a bias. Please, also note that though Einstein may get hung up on the walls of some teenagers, he’s the only one out of hundreds of notable scientists. Society’s instinctual admiration for sports figures, the undeserving beautiful, is greater in comparison to ANY scientist, and people absolutely DO compete for that adulation; putting aside, perhaps, their true nature. Like I said, I offer no solution here, because it seems if you look deep enough at society their is always that crack at the origin. A sin-fallen world.
(Jesus Christ is the only solution.)
You see, in order for any of what I am saying to be wrong a person must say that internal competition is a Good. You could never do it deductively. It will always be a “good bet” at best, and only for certain cases. Not absolute. (And believe it or not, people who refuse to speak in absolutes, nevertheless, do.)
Jesus even said (mind you, about satan’s kingdom) that division will not stand. And since, most people, I think, unconsciously perceive competition as a form of division it is perceived as a fundamental corruption. Perhaps, liberals are keen to perceive this (even if it is a farce, see below).
Nevertheless, if one is sure that this is wrong, I will give a hint as to what you must be about. It’s this, getting liberals to understand that competition is not division. That is no small order, because they DO believe that the down-trodden are victims of private enterprise and competition.
what makes you think Jesus was a pacifist?
Well, it’s a little off topic but…
“But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.”
I can’t do it, because I’m too weak, too sinful, and deep down inside inside I don’t really believe that death is just a doorway to God. I want to live, and I don’t want to get hit, no matter what God wants, and no matter what the Christ taught.
When an evil man strikes me, I won’t turn the other cheek, I’ll take his head off, because I’m too weak to follow the example and teachings of Christ.
Jesus could peacefully submit to the will of God (and the Romans) and allow himself to be crucified, but I’m too afraid of death and pain to do it.
At least that’s the way I see it.
I never said that or implied it. I implied that people (usually liberals, pacifists) perceive competition as division, and so they work to remove competition. I referred to Jesus concerning His words on Division only to make the valid argument that if a person is equating competition with division they probably will see competition as corrupt. It is a fallacy of equivocation, but a case must still be made to correct it, otherwise it remains. That is why I left off with suggesting the challenge to show liberals that competition is not necessarily division may be key. It should be easy considering how convicted people seem to be that competition is necessary to benefit society. To remain United is also another conviction among conservatives, so what is the reconciliation to help liberals cope with understanding competition is not division? Should be easy…
I agree with #35 bvw.
Americans learn freedom as children. Thomas Edison was free to wander, pick up old parts and experiment on his own. I was free to go where ever I wanted on my bicycle and pick up baseball/fooball games were the norm after school and on weekends. Sides were chosen, fights were handled by the participants. Yes sometimes my mother would call from the door to tell us to cool down–but she was there–another (and most profound) loss of freedom for children.
Mr. Rubin is proud of his contribution as a coach. But kids only learn when they’re free to choose, go, be freinds with, do what, (after their room is clean) they want.
It’s the whole “noncompetitive” aspect of children’s sports, imposed upon them by adults more concerned with political correctness than sporting effort, which is undermining the American spirit. Fortunately, it will take more than the work of a generation of liberal sissies to do this – for example, in the kids’ leagues where scorekeeping was prohibited, the kids kept score themselves. No matter how much the adults wanted to say there were no winners or losers, there are and the kids know it and know who won and who lost.
I just saw a video of President Obama dancing in India. God forbid the young men of America grow up to be spineless metrosexual wimps like him.
Quote of the day.
“If you don’t care about winning, you’re merely handing triumph to the other side. ”
This is now hanging above my desk. Thank you for the nice article!
Had a little league team (minor league) that was undefeated and leading the league after half the season. I took the worst players aside and asked if they would like to win the league and only get the minimum innings in the games or get to play as much as the others (this is developement like JV ball). They individually said they would prefer to win. Remeber the game is only part of the experience, practices and all. After we lost to the other top team I let the others know and gave to lesser players make up playing time and we still won out the rest of the games. The point was that the “bench” preferred a shot at being undefeated.
I signed my twin boys up for soccer when they were 6. After about three practices the coach came to me after practice and told me my boys were not going to play much because they weren’t good enough and of course we had to win. I know there is a difference between 6 and 11.
Indeed, they keep score……and continue to keep score.
I went to a graduate school that had a “no grade” system.
Within a few hours of every test, everyone in the class knew who had the highest grade and where each person ranked, in spite of having no names on the test.
Honors, high pass, pass, low pass, fail, sounded suspiciously like the grading system we were used to.
Yes Mr. Morgenholtz, they keep score!
The Brits have a saying (or used to):
The Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton.”
I probably wouldn’t have said it, but I would have been tempted to tell that mother, “If you don’t want your son to grow up to be a man, why don’t you just cut his balls off?”
I have not read all the comments here, but if no one else has stated this, I will: to teach kids not to compete at their best is to teach them a lack of respect for their opponents. Competing at one’s highest level at all times is good sportsmanship, and to do less than one’s best betrays a lack of respect for one’s opponent — even if the opponent is better than you. From the last few election cycles or the general behavior of actively political people, lack of respect for one’s opponents seems to be a pervasive problem. Learning to win graciously and to lose with confidence are life skills, and these too are not currently characteristics on display in abundance.
coached soccer U6 thru U18. No official scoring but believe me the kids kept track. As time went on it became clear that many of the parents did not know the score nearly as well as the kids. If you do not win the practice attendance falls off as the season wears on & you cannot teach anything. So to keep the kids involved & teach them you need to be competative. Furthermore, once you get a reputations as a “winner” coach you suddenly find your roster has many more good atheletes than the competition (even tho the league tries to balance the teams- kids & parents learn to game the system). The art of coaching is to do this while playing everyone & taching them the sport & sportsmanship.
“”We’re surrounded. That simplifies the problem.”
- Attributed to Lewis B. “Chesty” Puller, USMC
(I have found three versions of this one)
The quotes may not be Chesty Pullers,
but may instead have been said by General O.P.Smith”
From attitudes then, to attitudes today.
Credit: http://www.military-quotes.com/
My son played on a soccer team whose coach, John, had the opposite philosophy. He wanted to win every game and by a comfortable margin. And the kids almost always obliged. John was a very good coach, skilled and dedicated with high standards. He never mistreated the kids or lost his temper with them although he could be and was quite stern with underperformance. What John did superbly was motivate them to excel and work together as a close-knit team. He started coaching my son’s team when my son was 7 and stayed with those kids each year for 10 years. The kids loved him and so did the parents.
He forbade the team to overrun up the score unless he ordered it – and when he did order it, those kids were merciless. One day he heard the other coach literally curse and swear at one of his own (the other coach’s) players during a time out. This John could not countenance so he told his team to score as much as they could. They won 24-3, and then John explained why to the other coach. Neither would John permit physical retaliation against opponents for dirty play. He always taught that vengeance would be gained on the scoreboard. If they repeated it, John would just tell his players, “The sky’s the limit” and the crushing would begin.
Maybe it’s just that here in the South all that namby-pamby, self esteem crap never caught on.
Previous commenters’ points about high school ball and up are right – my daughter, a h.s. junior, plays soccer and the win-loss record is definitely the main thing, no mistake.
Ending about 10 years ago, I coached my daughter’s recreation soccer team in grade school. I expected the girls to play to win, not that we always did.
What Barry’s article glosses over is that the coach has to continually work on his players improving their mental and physical skills in practice. A one-game coaching change will do little to improve the team’s ability to win if their soccer skills are lacking.
Exposing the hypocrisy of feminism: http://manhood101.com/principles101.pdf
Thanks to all who made remarks about my article. I will add a little more. The team lost its next three games by a total of 14 goals to one. In the last game, against a team not very good and when the permanent coach was absent, the won 3 to 2. The conclusion was that the substitute coach was terrible but the kids just ignored him and did what they wanted. I should mention that the permanent coach did not even thank me after I substituted and clearly avoided asking me to coach the last game. Regarding the kid whose mother was yelling at him for celebrating, he was ignoring her and basically wasn’t affected by it. Of course, the situation differs greatly among states. This happened in Maryland. I don’t think it would happen in Texas. Finally, I don’t see the problem as historic liberalism but one of left-wing radicalism which has infiltrated and pretended to be liberalism. But let’s not get off on that bend. If you are interested in my writing generally–mostly about the Middle East but with some pieces about this kind of thing in the US, you can see it at http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com You might especially enjoy the Life in an American Fourth Grade series.
Thank god they didn’t play competitively, like these buffoonish kids:
http://www.dailyinterlake.com/article_dbcfb820-e9f6-11df-9f3f-001cc4c002e0.html
In races where every competitor receives an identical shiny gold plastic cup, there is no room for people, or teams that excel. There is no reward for effort, or competent leadership. Show up, stand around, win a plastic cup. Excel, with qualified, and confident coaches, players placed in positions their good at, and you don’t even get a gold cup…you get an invitation to just shut the hell up, and go away.
WSJ ARTICLE OF OCT 5 SHOWS THAT FLUENCY IN BASICS IS THE KEY TO EDUCATION REFORM:
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By GWENDOLYN BOUNDS
Ask preschooler Zane Pike to write his name or the alphabet, then watch this 4-year-old’s stubborn side kick in. He spurns practice at school and tosses aside workbooks at home. But Angie Pike, Zane’s mom, persists, believing that handwriting is a building block to learning.
Wendy Bounds discusses the fading art of handwriting, pointing out that new research shows it can benefit children’s motor skills and their ability to compose ideas and achieve goals throughout life.
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Gwendolyn Bounds reports on what your handwriting says about your brain and everything else.
She’s right. Using advanced tools such as magnetic resonance imaging, researchers are finding that writing by hand is more than just a way to communicate. The practice helps with learning letters and shapes, can improve idea composition and expression, and may aid fine motor-skill development.
It’s not just children who benefit. Adults studying new symbols, such as Chinese characters, might enhance recognition by writing the characters by hand, researchers say. Some physicians say handwriting could be a good cognitive exercise for baby boomers working to keep their minds sharp as they age.
Studies suggest there’s real value in learning and maintaining this ancient skill, even as we increasingly communicate electronically via keyboards big and small. Indeed, technology often gets blamed for handwriting’s demise. But in an interesting twist, new software for touch-screen devices, such as the iPad, is starting to reinvigorate the practice.
View Full Image
Angie Pike
Four-year-old Zane Pike used to toss aside his handwriting books. Now, the Cabot, Ark., preschooler is learning to write his letters using a smartphone application.
Most schools still include conventional handwriting instruction in their primary-grade curriculum, but today that amounts to just over an hour a week, according to Zaner-Bloser Inc., one of the nation’s largest handwriting-curriculum publishers. Even at institutions that make it a strong priority, such as the private Brearley School in New York City, “some parents say, ‘I can’t believe you are wasting a minute on this,’” says Linda Boldt, the school’s head of learning skills.
Recent research illustrates how writing by hand engages the brain in learning. During one study at Indiana University published this year, researchers invited children to man a “spaceship,” actually an MRI machine using a specialized scan called “functional” MRI that spots neural activity in the brain. The kids were shown letters before and after receiving different letter-learning instruction. In children who had practiced printing by hand, the neural activity was far more enhanced and “adult-like” than in those who had simply looked at letters.
“It seems there is something really important about manually manipulating and drawing out two-dimensional things we see all the time,” says Karin Harman James, assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience at Indiana University who led the study.
More
The Juggle: In Digital Age, Does Handwriting Still Matter?
Adults may benefit similarly when learning a new graphically different language, such as Mandarin, or symbol systems for mathematics, music and chemistry, Dr. James says. For instance, in a 2008 study in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, adults were asked to distinguish between new characters and a mirror image of them after producing the characters using pen-and-paper writing and a computer keyboard. The result: For those writing by hand, there was stronger and longer-lasting recognition of the characters’ proper orientation, suggesting that the specific movements memorized when learning how to write aided the visual identification of graphic shapes.
Other research highlights the hand’s unique relationship with the brain when it comes to composing thoughts and ideas. Virginia Berninger, a professor of educational psychology at the University of Washington, says handwriting differs from typing because it requires executing sequential strokes to form a letter, whereas keyboarding involves selecting a whole letter by touching a key.
She says pictures of the brain have illustrated that sequential finger movements activated massive regions involved in thinking, language and working memory-the system for temporarily storing and managing information.
And one recent study of hers demonstrated that in grades two, four and six, children wrote more words, faster, and expressed more ideas when writing essays by hand versus with a keyboard.
View Full Image
AJ Mast for the Wall Street Journal
For research at Indiana University, children undergo specialized MRI brain scans that spot neurological activity.
Even in the digital age, people remain enthralled by handwriting for myriad reasons-the intimacy implied by a loved one’s script, or what the slant and shape of letters might reveal about personality. During actress Lindsay Lohan’s probation violation court appearance this summer, a swarm of handwriting experts proffered analysis of her blocky courtroom scribbling. “Projecting a false image” and “crossing boundaries,” concluded two on celebrity news and entertainment site hollywoodlife.com. Beyond identifying personality traits through handwriting, called graphology, some doctors treating neurological disorders say handwriting can be an early diagnostic tool.
“Some patients bring in journals from the years, and you can see dramatic change from when they were 55 and doing fine and now at 70,” says P. Murali Doraiswamy, a neuroscientist at Duke University. “As more people lose writing skills and migrate to the computer, retraining people in handwriting skills could be a useful cognitive exercise.”
In high schools, where laptops are increasingly used, handwriting still matters. In the essay section of SAT college-entrance exams, scorers unable to read a student’s writing can assign that portion an “illegible” score of 0.
Even legible handwriting that’s messy can have its own ramifications, says Steve Graham, professor of education at Vanderbilt University. He cites several studies indicating that good handwriting can take a generic classroom test score from the 50th percentile to the 84th percentile, while bad penmanship could tank it to the 16th. “There is a reader effect that is insidious,” Dr. Graham says. “People judge the quality of your ideas based on your handwriting.”
Handwriting-curriculum creators say they’re seeing renewed interest among parents looking to hone older children’s skills-or even their own penmanship. Nan Barchowsky, who developed the Barchowsky Fluent Handwriting method to ease transition from print-script to joined cursive letters, says she’s sold more than 1,500 copies of “Fix It … Write” in the past year.
Some high-tech allies also are giving the practice an unexpected boost through hand-held gadgets like smartphones and tablets. Dan Feather, a graphic designer and computer consultant in Nashville, Tenn., says he’s “never adapted well to the keypads on little devices.” Instead, he uses a $3.99 application called “WritePad” on his iPhone. It accepts handwriting input with a finger or stylus, then converts it to text for email, documents or Twitter updates.
And apps are helping Zane Pike-the 4-year-old who refused to practice his letters. The Cabot, Ark., boy won’t put down his mom’s iPhone, where she’s downloaded a $1.99 app called “abc PocketPhonics.” The program instructs Zane to draw letters with his finger or a stylus; correct movements earn him cheering pencils.
Indiana University
In children who had practiced writing by hand, the scans showed heightened brain activity in a key area, circled on the image at right, indicating learning took place.
“He thinks it’s a game,” says Angie Pike.
Similarly, kindergartners at Harford Day School in Bel Air, Md., are taught to write on paper but recently also began tracing letter shapes on the screen of an iPad using a handwriting app.
“Children will be using technology unlike I did, and it’s important for teachers to be familiar with it,” says Kay Crocker, the school’s lead kindergarten teacher. Regardless of the input method, she says, “You still need to be able to write, and someone needs to be able to read it.”
My wife is a grade school teacher here in Canada. In the province where we live, there are province-wide aptitude tests administered in 3rd and 6th grade. The results are published at the provincial level, school board level and school level.
My wife was teaching at the 3rd grade level in a school with only one 3rd grade class. Her class finished 15% above the school board results and 20% over the provincial results.
She got a memo from the school board reprimanding her for obviously using “non-approved teaching methods”.
Sadly, I am not kidding. The aversion to success and winning clearly permeates our entire soft-bellied society.
This is great.
Except that you’re giving up next week and, presumably, every week after that. Why? I see this all the time. People complain about how their kids aren’t getting a good education in school, but they keep sending them in there year after year to have their days and weeks, and eventually, a large part of their lives wasted.
You find the answer. You prove it works. And then you roll over and surrender your lives and your children to incompetent or evil people because they’re in charge.
Stop it. Stop rolling over. Stop giving up on your children.
Great article. Our neighborhood swim team had parents on the board that decided to give out purple “Participation” ribbons after meets so that no one would “feel bad” about not getting a ribbon. After handing out awards, we would always find these same ribbons tossed on the ground on the way out of the pool. Once, as I was helping to hand out ribbons, one of the smallest swimmers said, “I don’t want that one. Everyone gets that one.” Kids understand when they’re being manipulated.
I think you may have uncovered the brilliant, but well-hidden, strategy behind the NASA outreach to Muslim nations. Make them feel better about themselves so they won’t try to win!
Of course, winning matters. That’s why they keep score.
Sometimes I attend my granddaughters soccer practice and I see the same thing, bad players allowed to stay in critical positions causing the team to lose which makes the good players to have to work twice as hard for no reason. That happens in children’s karate classes also, but there is a different scenario because it is individual effort and not teamwork at play. Believe it or not you see young lazy kids learning the ropes about how to pay homage to the Master so that they don’t have to practice harder but yet they will still pass their next karate test and receive a higher belt. In the karate classes that I attended for ten years, homage and how much money your family had counted more than a work ethic. But you cannot always blame the kids because they just mimic their lazy feminized parents. America needs to return to their roots of rewarding a strong work ethic.
Read C. L. R. James’s Beyond a Boundary, a fascinating critique of cricket as a metaphor for life.
I don’t know how it is in the US but in Australia there is a program for soccer where kids up to 6 years old play on a quarter sized field and winning or losing is almost impossible to track as parents are running around on the field helping. On the evidence I have seen its good fun for all. Some kids don’t like even that level of competition (like my youngest daughter) so they just drop it and do something else. For age six they play without a goal keeper and from 7 onwards they start to play properly. The teams soon sort themselves out into degrees of skill and by age 12 young can play in an A, B or C league. By the time you are 15 the range of leagues goes down below F. Because there is a consistency of skill in each of these games they are always tight and competitive and the availability of higher ranking teams creates an incentive for the motivated kid to work harder to be promoted. Basically most kids enjoy the game with a very few going on to make a career out of it.
I will say that I have learned through my kids that if you want to change the way they are treated you just have to volunteer for a position. My wife and I have a huge impact on our kids school through the fund raising work we do through the Parents Association. We have also been able to become personal friends with their teachers and some of our friends are already joined to the high school Parents association even though their kids haven’t started there yet.
It’s like that in the US. My 6 year old son plays soccer. At his age kids are not really capable of doing much more than running in a pack after the ball, so while they are developing some basic soccer skills, most of what they’re doing is merely supervised gross motor activity. The coaches stay on the field with the teams and scorekeeping is on the honor system. At the end of the game the kids all cheer each other. My 6 year old just loves it.
My 10 year old, however, plays flag football, where there are winners and losers and playoffs. He wouldn’t stand for playing by the 6-year-olds’ rules where everybody’s a winner. He wants to play well and be a good sport, and also win fair and square if he can. When he gets older he can be more competitive, but for now he’s right at the level he needs to be.
I think 8 years old is a good maximum age for the everybody-wins style of play, with full competition (including tryouts) becoming appropriate at about age 12. We can quibble about the exact age cutoffs, but I think it’s incontrovertible that older kids and teens are looking for something completely different from their sports experience than are those with single-digit ages.
Suddenly, I noticed that one boy’s mother was really angry at him, claiming he hadn’t showed good sportsmanship because he was too happy over the victory.
[...]
Still, the bawling out didn’t put a damper on his big smile.
I’d have given the kid a few final words, telling him to never forget that there’s nothing wrong with appreciating and savoring a victory, regardless of what he’s told by anyone.
There’s nothing wrong with winning and being proud of your win. It’s wrong to be an *ungracious* winner: to trash-talk the opponent or rub it in his face. But certainly our kids must be taught how to win graciously, because (we hope) they will at some point have to win at something. They need to learn how to treat the losing team as worthy opponents who lost a fair fight. That’s the essence of good sportsmanship.
Otherwise you grow up to be as gracious in victory as Barney Frank.
I coached hockey for several years. My message to the kids was that if they wanted everyone to “win” hockey wasn’t for them, and they should consider quilting instead.
Longtime kids baseball coach here. Of course, the kids need instruction and to be told how they can improve and be competitive.
But all kids need a chance to play the game, otherwise they cannot learn and improve. Once kids reach the age of 13 or 14, it’s okay to start being a little more competitive with better players getting more time. By the time they are 16, they are ready to accept their roles as starters and backups.
With all due respect, soccer is irrelevant. You see the same nonsense in T-ball etc. The adults all believe that the little tykes should be spared judgment lest it impair their self esteem. Some schools use the same criterion for their courses; Pass/Fail or simply Pass.
Now what happens when little Betsy/Bobby grow up and go into the real world where everyone keeps score. Anyone remember the Darwin theory. Losers don’t fair well so it would be prudent to prepare the young for life rather than shield them. Survival is a heck of a thing to deny.
In college a professor asked me what I would do if I had a chance at a very good promotion and in the tale I was single with no obligations. My only competition was a likeable guy with a large family and a big mortgage. I said I would let the person who needed the promotion have the job. In front of God and 30 plus students he told me I was a fool; that with that attitude I would fail in life. That was pre PC years in 1964. As you can see, I remembered that lecture. I never became a ruthless character messing over any who I was in competition with, but I played fair and looked out for myself in life. I earned a reputation of doing my best to complete my construction projects jobs in a professional and quality manner and treating people fairly which got me promotions and bonuses I did not seek as well as senior management protection when I was unfairly attacked.
I coached sports and I was constantly fighting the parents and grandparents who wanted to reward losers and losing teams. I always told my teams that to lose when you have done your best, and you know when that is, is fine, you just faced a better opponent. But to win when you didn’t do your best, was not praiseworthy.
For all the efforts of the “feel good” crowd of social-psychologists, the men of the skilled metal trades (at the least, Boiler-makers, Steam-fitters, Iron-workers) use their (the social-psychologists’) societal personae in this way.
If a fellow worker makes a mistake (And most usually, mistakes which are done in metal are difficult and expensive.), two or three others finding out about it will look over his shoulder, or look at his work, offering facial expressions of surprised admiration, but with this kind of thing in addition: “G-o-o-o-d job, Johnny; you worked s-o-o-o-o hard on that—didn’t you? Wait’ll teacher sees this; you’re gonna a surprise, . . . a real gold star, . . . for effort, for sure.”, and: “Yeah, I’d sure like to know how ya’ did that—wouldn’t you, Bob?”, “Boy, howdy, yeah, that must’a been a lotta fun.”—commentary and adulation in intonation, most distressing.
When it begins with: “G-o-o-o-d j-o-o-o-b, Jo-o-ohnny.”, if not sooner, the pore guy is so informed that, something is really wrong; and, he has a choice: in solicitation of help, he can show obeisance and humility, or he can cuss them out in verbiage which, I, for one, have never seen written out.
If he’s already so aware, he has the same choice. In either case, if the pore guy takes the wrong choice, after their parting deep, deep apologies, the other guys walk away, chuckling.
And this becomes one incidental way in which the apprentices learns how men assist each other in learning to work together to keep America strong; and perhaps best of all, the “feel good” crowd of social-psychologists who have spent decades trying as they might, but ruining our schools, the while, well, they’re included, too; and, isn’t that just so nice, . . .
And, to a topic in present dearth, Barry Rubin gave a surprising excellent and succinct treatment—amazing for interest.
For the team, no doubt, that lesson in success—but in contrast greatly high-lighted through a repeated constrained failure—and, for false cause and false reason but with insistence, will be a thing which each of their memories will make future calls on, . . .
Why would a kid even go out for a team if he/she wasn’t interested in standing out from at least the general school population?
Because the kid enjoys playing the game, one supposes. There’s something ineffably creepy about a kid who’d do it to “stand out from at least the general school population,” or a parent who’d encourage it for those reasons.
Nice, been trying to get this across to an administrator at our school for years. This is one of the major problems in school. Everyone has to be treated the same. Thus the discipline problems in the class, stay in the class, to the detriment of the class. Sure the old school way had it’s problems, but kids grew up tough and competitive. If you were un-willing to try hard in the class, you were gone, to the dreaded study hall ( not pc anymore).
It’s hard to make comments on stories like these because you only here one side. There are different types of teams. Some try and be competitive, some don’t. Some coaches know how to teach skills, some aren’t as good. Sounds like you have a fundamental difference of philosophy and you should have signed up with a different team. The first goal of a team at this level should be to have fun, second to develop skills, and then to win. Winning can be part of the first goal. At the young age of 11, if most of those players don’t have years of club experience, should be to develop an all around player. That doesn’t mean you have to play weaker players as forward in a game necissarily, but you should teach all the kids how to be good at being a forward. Otherwise you are hampering their development which should come ahead of winning.
It is important that kids have a good positive experience so they want to play in future seasons. It sounds like your team is failing at that and therefore is failing at the first rule of having fun. This sounds like a very low level league coached by a volunteer. You get what you pay for and it doesn’t sound like you invested the time or money to put your kid on the kind of team you desire to play on. Their is room for non-competitive, get your feet wet, teams that practice multiple times a week and teams that are really about making kids better at soccer and not just having a fun positive introduction to the sport. My hunch is the problem is less with the team and more with you failing to understand the type of team you signed up for.
Sports is the ultimate free market activity. I think you should honor your commitment and finish the season, but recommend joining a club team the following season. You haven’t explained how many days a week the kids practice or if and how much the coach is paid. But it sounds like a volunteer thing. Maybe after spending that kind of money and time real competitive soccer costs you will appreciate the coach who volunteered his time to try and get kids active and playing soccer and then has to deal with inappreciative parents who criticize his style.
If I signed up for the type of team this sounds like it is and then they forced my kid to specialize before they learned the fundamentals (which takes more than one season) I would be an upset parent. You coached one game and likely no harm will come of it, but perhaps this is something you have failed to understand at this point. A little less criticism and a little more volunteering on the field without trying to make broad societal points would help you gain some perspective.
I coached youth sports in way rural nebraska for more than 15 years. The mission statement of our local youth baseball program says “to provide a competitive athletic opportunity…..” in this part of the world all levels above t ball are competitive. If a community is large enough to have an “in town” league, be it baseball, soccer, soft ball, or basketball, boys or girls, that league is competitive and for those who crave a bigger dose there are traveling teams which feature the best players to provide it.
Small rural communities who do not have enough kids to have a league compete against each othe where it is not unheard of to drive 60 miles or more for games. These contests which are small town team vrs small town team are by their very nature competitive
Strive for excellence. See how the Chinese train their acrobats…
http://www.hulu.com/watch/69775/pbs-indies-circus-school
They cut all funding for sports in my kid’s school. You know why? They said it was too expensive. So I went to the district school board meeting and I asked how much it would take to restore sports. They said, “Right now, we’re spending $200 million per day on soccer. That sounds unrealistic to me. How could anyone expect a reasonable person to believe that?
Adressing soley the aspects as it relates to soccer:
I’ve played recreational and competetive youth soccer..
I’ve also coached and refereed the game as well..
Thanks for stepping up and coaching. Sounds like you should stick around
Soccer programs and coaches have to walk a fine line in balancing fun and competition.
The focus early on is retaining players and teaching them how to play the game so that they can evolve into skilled players… coaching soley to win does not necessarily teach the players the skills they need to become skilled older players. What it does do, is reinforce the skills and ego of the best skilled players at the expense of the other players – for instance… always putting your best players at the key positions and never letting the other players get a chance to play forward/striker.. additionally, as that ‘best player’ gets older – he gets much more increased competition from other players at the highschool level – and odds are, he won’t be good enough to earn the spot on the team.. but .. since all he’s ever done is play forward – he lacks the skills of a good midfield playmaker, or even the instincts of a stalwart defender. (I won’t even address the folly of sticking 1 player for all of his early youth career in the position of goalkeeper at the expense of learning to be a ‘field player’)
In the old days, it used to be that the best players went in forward position and every other player funneled everything, all the time, to that one player. The team existed to support the star child, to the detriment of all but the star player. The best way to develop skilled player”s” is by ensuring the children at an early age get as much ‘ball time’ or ‘touches on the ball’ as possible and help them all develop enough skills so that they can make that next leap into competitive, aggressive soccer. The old method only ensured that the ‘early’ star player would make that leap.
As the kids get older – namely in the teenage years – soccer programs do and should encourage more winning. Not to mention, the kids start demanding it. Usually in the early teen years, soccer programs offer an alternative – a competitive program where the more skilled and more aggressive players go to play. They travel to other clubs (and cities and states) to compete against other similarly skilled (and like minded) children. They get much more specialized instruction and from coaches other than well meaning dads (and moms).
This two pronged approach tries not to stifle competition but aims to groom the largest possible pool of possible players available to highschools, colleges, and even professional leagues. The long term goal is to develop as large a number of viable soccer players for the US national team, for proffessional leagues and keeping kids “in the game” instead of dropping out due to frustration or never feeling like they’re learning/improving as an individual.
It’s far from perfect.. but the goal is not to run kids off due to losing 12-0 and due to never getting a fair chance to play and learn all the positions – all the while getting more and more competitive and even offering the chance to play in the higher competitive levels as they get older. It’s hard to ride that fine line and harder even still to please everyone.
I’m not sure if there’s a better way to do it. And I’m sure we’d all approach it differently – the balancing of the desire to win(and God knows I want to win), with the responsibility to teach the game of soccer (including giving them the opportunity to perform on the field at every position) to each individual so that they can have the opportunity to evolve to the next level?
Eloquently said. Totally consistent with my comments in #61.
As a kid, I was the kid that the other kids picked last, so I was keen as a coach to insist that all players, even the weak ones, improve themselves. That’s why the focus of my practices was to improve everyone’s individual and team skills.
Yes, I tended to put the better players in positions that would help the team win the game, but every girl played at least half the game, usually much more, and there were many opportunities for everyone to try every position. Within these parameters, I also had a personal goal of trying to help every player score at least one goal a season.
Believe Barry needs to find a team whose coach works on individual and team fundamentals, develops good sportsmanship (win or lose), and doesn’t suppress children’s natural desire to compete and win.
I coached grade school girls soccer for several years as a volunteer coach. The league imposed a similar “no scorekeeping” policy for the younger kids, purportedly so they would focus more on learning the game. I thought it was a bonehead policy but I was just a coach/volunteer for my daughter’s sake and had no control over the policy and I wasn’t interested in getting into the soccer politics there. Although there were no formal scoring records, our kids still knew and kept track of the score. My daughter was quite talented and my son kept track of all of her stats (this was unsolicited by me). I stressed that the girls should always do their best and I pushed them to learn and improve their skills. I don’t think it held back the more competitive kids, who knew exactly how many goals they scored. My daughter is now playing college and my son graduated with a degree in stats and economics
I still think the no scorekeeping was/is a boneheaded policy that did not enhance the kids’ experience at all.
The author weakens his case with his over use of the hyphen.
Practically every one has been to grade school, junior high school (now unfortunately called now middle school, and high school.
To use a hyphen between grade and school is demeaning to the readers.
Furthermore most people know what soccer is.
I’ve no wish to embarrass you, sir, but English punctuation REQUIRES the hyphen in the title’s context. As a noun, “grade school” needs no hyphen. As an compound attributive adjective–i.e., “grade-school team”–you’ve got to include it.
Whether or not to include the hyphen in such locutions can end up being pretty important: would you like your bratwurst nestled between two “hot-dog buns” or two “hot dog buns”? On second thought, don’t answer that question.
I Quote my father, the grandfather of 11 competetive atheletes,”If you put 18 kids in the backyard, they will pick 2 equal baseball teams, add an adult and one team will be loaded.” Its not a softening of the competetive spririt that causes leagues to institute minimum playing time rules, its Coach DAD channeling Vince Lombardi. Kids sports are not about creating the next pro athelete they are about instilling a love of the game and being part of a team. Kids want to win, but its more important to play. Riding the pine is no fun.
Have anyone ever heard of the Ottawa Rule? It’s so ridiculous!
http://ottawa.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20100531/OTT_Soccer_100631/20100531/?hub=OttawaHome
An Ottawa soccer league is enforcing a maximum five-goal victory to prevent blowout games among kids between five and 18 years old.
According to the rules, the winner becomes the loser if they beat their opponents by more than five goals.
Dude, WTF?! Socialists in Canada are so screwed up in their heads.
Had exactly the same experience in little league. The one game I coached was the one game we won. For the same reasons.
Sorry, but until junior high treating kids like this is horrible. It’s the reason little league is not as popular as other sports. In little league, you have to try out, you don’t make the team with your friend, you get put on the ‘looser’ team. And then the town has one small group of boys that love baseball (the ones that made the cut for the team full of winners), and the rest who were never even given a chance or time to learn the game, that hate it. At 11, you aren’t trying to win games, you are trying to win kids hearts into loving sports. And if you never give them a chance to learn to play, they will always be the kid not good at sports, and leave sports to ‘the other kids’. My son was always the youngest, and under your model, would have been turned off to sports because he couldn’t compete due to his smaller size. But guess what? Because he actually got to play and learn, once he had a growth spurt and got as big as the other kids, and after having to play way harder before to keep up with them, once he was equal size, he kicked butt. And dude, you let your kid play soccer? You have no right talking about playing to win, because by definition anyone that plays soccer is um, the opposite of a winner
just ask any football coach.
“Soccer, in other words, is a long series of busted plays, plans that don’t work, and failures of execution.”
(Michael Levin — http://mises.org/freemarket_detail.aspx?control=55)
Soccer is a ridiculous game, played by ridiculous people.
I read through all the comments and did not see anyone make this connection. Remember when the Army allowed all the soldiers to wear a beret, albeit black ones? See . A few quotes from this article:
“The Army must change to maintain its relevance for the evolving strategic environment. To provide our Nation strategic options for mastering the complexity of that environment, The Army committed, in its Vision a year ago, that “as technology allows, we will begin to erase the distinctions between heavy and light forces.” In the United States Army, the beret has become a symbol of excellence of our specialty units.” Yet, “To symbolize The Army’s commitment to transforming itself into the Objective Force, The Army will adopt the black beret for wear Army-wide” because “[it} is about our excellence as Soldiers, our unity as a force, and our values as an institution.” So, as we don our berets, we are all excellent now, regardless of the fact that the Green Berets require much more training and are regularly sent into more dangerous situations.
So this is a real-world example of all those not-keeping-score-rec-league players growing up to even things up a bit.
And just so everyone understand where I am coming from, my older son played rec-league soccer for eight years. He graduated to football and lacrosse, played football for Fork Union Military Academy, the private school that has sent the highest number of players to the NFL. My youngest son has never played a day of soccer in his life. He’s played three years of lacrosse and one of football. I believe lacrosse to be a sport that requires much more strategy than soccer, and it’s a lot more fun to watch, plus it’s tailor-made for boys – stick+ball.
The missing link is http://www.army.mil/features/beret/beret.htm for the Army beret announcement and http://www.navytimes.com/news/2009/02/navy_khaki_022009/ for the article on the khakis.
Sorry about all the typos in the previous post; I usually have a much better command of our language!
To add to the Army example, the Navy is allowing junior enlisted (E1-5) to wear a khaki work shirt now instead of making them wait until Chief (E6-9) to wear a khaki working uniform. This Navy Times article points out that what is lacking is ability to earn the khakis : “Most chiefs and officers hate the concept. They said it devalued the elite status they had earned. It’s more than a shirt, they argued. It’s a symbol of belonging to the chief’s mess or the wardroom. Something they worked for had been compromised. A vital distinction between ranks was gone.” Once again, we all need to be the same, dress the same, score the same, etc.
I realize this is news is a year old for the Navy example and two years for the Army. And yes, my husband was a Chief in the Navy.
I can sum this up by saying: “Winning isn’t everything, but loosing sucks.” Kids are cognizant of this at very a young age. In fact, kids hate losing any more than adults. The only difference is, kids get over it faster and aren’t as affected by it.
That being said, if you are playing organized sports, be it soccer, baseball, or football, you should play to win regardless of the age. The goal should be to play the very best that you can to give your team a chance to win. The moral you should learn is that there will be a winner and a loser, but if you played the best you can and still lose, that happens and there is no dishonor.
At the beginning of this year, my seven year old son played little league basketball and baseball. Both leagues were the no score keeping kind. They also relaxed the rules to reduce the complexity. My son was bored out of his tree and didn’t do well at either. He didn’t really enjoy practice and didn’t mind missing them even though there were only two a week.
In basketball, they didn’t keep score, didn’t call traveling, and didn’t double dribbling. So basically the games were just the two ball hogging kids running up and down the court as the other’s looked on. It was very boring for me to watch and it was very boring for my son to play, because he thought it was rude to hog the ball so much. Because they didn’t keep score, the games really had no purpose for him.
In baseball, the games were also very boring to watch. Since they didn’t keep score the games were very mechanical and without purpose as well. My son was so bored his main purpose for playing was going to the snack bar to spend the food coupons given to them after each game.
Needless to say I thought that athletics weren’t going to be in my son’s future except that he expressed some interest in playing youth tackle football. I told him it was rough and very demanding, but he wanted to sign up anyway. I knew he didn’t know what he was getting into, but I let him sign up with much trepidation. I figured he would want to quit after a month, but I was also curious to see what would happen.
Well football started this past August and I way underestimated what he was getting into as well. Youth tackle football is exponentially more intense than basketball, baseball or soccer. Practices were 2.5 hours long 5 days a week. Coaches told them that they were playing to win and acted like it. They yelled at the kids like they were in Marine boot camp. The conditioning was tough and the contact was brutal. Huge demands were placed on the kids, because most of them had to play offense, defense and special teams. The games were on a regulation football field, all the rules were enforced. Most importantly, they kept score. The coaches even had to remain on the sideline during the game which meant that the 7 and 8 year old kids really had to know what they were doing. The only thing they didn’t do was kick field goals or punt because kids that age can’t do it proficiently yet. There is no political correctness, self-esteem BS in football. If you are not putting out 110%, both mentally and phyisically, you will get your ass handed too you and you will get hurt. The best play period. I didn’t know kids that age were that capable, but they were.
I don’t know what it was about football, but my son really responded to it. At first he was out of shape and very laid back as he was during baseball and basketball, and the coaches didn’t even know his name for the first three of weeks. Then one day by random, he went and practiced with the linemen and the rest is history. He went from “Mr. Obscure” to “The Animal” over the next three weeks. He started doing very well and earned starting lineman positions on both defense and offence. He ended the season as the most improved player and was considered by his coaches to be the toughest kid on the field. To top it all off my son loved every minute of it and can’t wait for next season. All I can say is who knew?
The lessons my son learned about self-sacrifice, teamwork, and accomplishment were invaluable life lessons. His self-confidence shot through the roof. The way he manned-up, set aside his fear, and rose to meet his challenges truly inspired me. The father is supposed to inspire the son on the other way around, but that’s what happened. My son is more of a man at seven than I am now and I’m damn proud of him. I don’t think he would have learned this playing youth soccer especially if they don’t emphasize winning.
Don’t worry guys, just watch youth football and rest assured there will be a generation of young American men who will know how to kick ass and take names.
My opinion of the this post is the author is saying with a little control..we can succeed. Everybody keeps score..somehow, whether it’s soccer, lacrosse, baseball, hot dog eating.
The “I won and screwed the American citizens” president is overseas now telling them that we are once again inferior. They are keeping score. They are also reprimanding us on our spending, they are keeping score. Obama/handlers have done a good job of playing the destroy America game.
. The USA becomes less and less competitive, because we don’t know how to play what ever the game Obama has going on in this economy.
To heck with “play to feel good”…If you don’t play to win, don’t play, there is no point and I find it irritating. People need competition and rules, and winning makes us feel good.
At the young child level, I think a happy median is needed. Having a winning at all costs Vince Lombardie style coach at that age isn’t good either. It often resulted in coaches making poorer players miserable, and pushing good ones too much. But in reaction to that, the liberals went too far, and said winning meant nothing. I think the writer of this article found the happy medium. Try your best to win, and enjoy it when you do, but still try to have fun while you do. Use your best players where they belong, but still treat the poorer ones with respect.
I am more familiar with volleyball than soccer, but sometimes the better team loses at the younger ages. In volleyball at young ages you are trying to teach them to pass the ball with their forearms to a setter who sets the ball to a hitter who hits the ball back over the net. That requires three people to perform three different skills to score. As a coach and parent you should want your kid to learn all of those skills so they will be successful later in their volleyball career. If the other team just hits the ball back over in one hit, they are more likely to win the game as it is likely one of the three people involved in the play will make a mistake. The “hit it right back over team” isn’t learning to play volleyball though and in a year, the team that lost will be able to crush them. I think the same thing is happening with the soccer team, although it sounds more like a rec league that just doesn’t practice enough to really improve individual skills and the parent who wrote the article thinks that is going to happen just from a weekly game. The game is mostly where the coach lets kids do what they were taught in practice and at that young level should be trying to give kids a basic understanding of all the positions. They can specialize when they get older and/or move to a competive league.
Dear Barry
I am only interested in Civilization, not western civilization.
When I was a kid playing basketball, we had a pretty weak team (me and a few of the others couldn’t even do a layup shot!), but a smart coach who tailored his strategy accordingly and convinced us to play it. The result was a very defensively oriented team that never lost. And we all got equal playing time!
“When playing a game, the goal is to win, but it is the goal that is important, not the winning.” —Reiner Knizia.
I saw this quote on another blog discussing this very topic. I thought it was apropos to this discussion.
Can we get away from the stupid liberal v conservative debate regarding sports & especially around world football aka soccer? I have heard this cack from a number of commentators on radio & TV & its pathetically sad.
Baseball is the #1 sport in 2 countries.
Cuba & Venezuela… I’m sure Castro & Chavez can make some political point with that fact.
Basketball is #1 in Lithuania & The philippines & is America’s most popular sports export.
Gridiron is #1 in the US.
Ice Hockey is #1 in Canada & popular in some American & European cities.
Cricket is # 1 in India, Pakistan & a few other commonwealth countries.
Rugby (Union & League) is #1 in New Zealand & also extremely popular in Australia, S. Africa & the pacific islands in the south seas.
Football is head & shoulders above the rest in popularity around the globe. Nothing political there. Its just a cheap game to play around the world – a ball & 4 stones/coats/flags to mark the goals is all the kids need. Same reason with basketball.
For similar reasons gridiron will never be popular around the world.
Please spare me any BS about “gridiron is tough & they couldn’t handle it!” Try playing rugby or Aussie Rules Football & then tell me all about your “toughness” when you heal up. Nice Fat Lads they are but the NFL is certainly not as tough. Take off your helmets & pads & play like real men!
One of the main differences in US football is that its largely a white middle class suburban game. Whereas its origins & much of its support around the world is still “working-class”. This leads to a lot of parental involvement & paid coaches. Thats not always a good thing. I have never seen so many parents & indeed coaches who were clueless about the sport. Watching a paid coach trying to teach 3 year old the game – Better luck herding cats! I never played on a “regular team” until I was 10-11. Instead we played in the neighbourhood, learning the skills needed to beat larger & faster players. Learning what to do when the opponent has the ball, developing our legs & lungs. Football is all about individual skill, tied in with teamwork, hard work & passion. A kid has to put in their own practice time in their own yard & the parents need to stop relying on a paid coach to be the miracle worker.
Anyhow each to his own: Enjoy your sport, while I enjoy mine. The big football match this week – the Manchester Derby — Man Utd V Man City tomorrow! Come on you Red Devils!! Cheers!
Good points David. I agree with everything you said except for the paragraph that states:
“Please spare me any BS about “gridiron is tough & they couldn’t handle it!” Try playing rugby or Aussie Rules Football & then tell me all about your “toughness” when you heal up. Nice Fat Lads they are but the NFL is certainly not as tough. Take off your helmets & pads & play like real men!”
Respectfully, this is where you derailed yourself. For the record Australian Rules football is for boys named Bruce who can’t handle Rugby. Rugby, in the U.S., is an alternate sport for preppie boys named Skip and Chip who can’t handle football. The helmets and pads are used more as weapons rather than protection. In reality, football is 22 Players converging at closing speeds in excess of 45 mph with the non-stated intension of hitting their opponents so hard they have to be carried off the field. That’s just to get the game started, as the game continues it get rougher:)
Just stirring the pot mate.
Never been to a game & honestly can’t remember the last time I saw a whole NFL game… just way too many stops & starts & commercial breaks for me. But I take all the points you raised regarding gridiron & would only add that the few times i do watch it I am rarely impressed with the “tackling.” I think the All Blacks, Kiwis & Springboks could teach them a thing or tow about really tough tackling.
Anyhow I will let them defend their sport along with the Aussie footballers. Good luck with your viewpoint next time you are down under!
Cheers
This is like the distilled essence of punditry. The guy is in charge for one freaking game, and not only does he decide that he knows how to coach youth sports, but that he can discern a larger politico-philosophical lesson in the experience.
Or he could, you know, just be a father and shut up.
If the schools in the US continue on that trend, the US will soon be at the level of France in every major world sport event, because that is the French motto in sports as expressed by the Baron Pierre de Coubertin who, as he was reviving the Olympic games, thought that :”L’important c’est de participer” ie “The important thing is to participate” Forget about winning, just participating is enough.
Now where does that leave France in most sports? Last summer the French soccer team decided it didn’t even WANT to participate, and went on strike instead of training before a major match in South Africa, shaming the whole French people in the process…
My advice to Barry Rubin: put your child in another soccer team. Nothing is worse for a child’s self esteem than losing match after match after match….
Great post
Both decisive wins and tough loses prepare our kids for the future. Not so much for future games, but for life. The world is a very competitive place.
Yeah I really see what you mean about inequality and all. For example, you suck at writing. Aside from the endless logical flaws in your article, I find it suspiciously close to another article written by another right-wing hack with no basic reasoning skills: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123680101041299201.html
I’m sure it’s totally a coincidence though.
Thought you also might enjoy watching your idiotic arguments and ham-fisted analogies torn to shreds: http://www.ginandtacos.com/2010/11/12/barry-rubin-gets-the-fjm-treatment/
This brought up pleasant memories of my elder son’s youth soccer days. Then a brief prayer of thanskgiving that nobody like Mr. Rubin had a son on my son’s team, and a thought of how blessed the coach was that that was true.
Of course the ultimate participation trophy is having your typo become the word of the year. Aw honey, everyone wins this spelling bee!
A close second participation trophy is having a 31+BMI and being told you’re more athletic than a Super Bowl winning quarterback. Aw honey, you tried and that’s all that counts! Good job!