I’ve been coaching youth sports for a few years now and everything I read and hear from other coaches and professionals points to the idea that the kids are supposed to be playing for fun. Winning is not the objective at all. This is reinforced in the leagues I participate in by not even keeping score in most cases. In basketball the scoreboard isn’t even turned on until the 8-9 level. It is shut off once the score reaches a 20 point disparity. The kids aren’t supposed to care about winning, or awards, or accolades, but they do. It feels schizophrenic to tell kids from the time they are born that winning doesn’t matter and then sit them down in front of a TV or in a stadium where it is immediately apparent that winning is all that matters. I don’t think the problem is introducing kids to professional athletics. I think the problem is not being upfront about the value of winning and losing.
People like Michael Jordan, Steve Jobs, and Stephen King are only successful thanks to the fortitude they built through failure. Jordan even made a commercial about it. When we remove the specter of loss we remove the opportunity for victory and take away the very sense of competitive closure that is necessary for kids to grow to appreciate competition. If you give everyone an identical medal you might as well give no metal at all, because it limits the meaning to ‘I participated in a sport!’
They have uniforms and photos for that.
Some Thoughts:
- Not spending a lot of time being an intellectual means not having very much to write about.
- Cold Justice creator Dick Wolf found the two most attractive competent female criminal specialists he could and slid them into pantsuits in order to create his new show, Cold Justice. The real question is: How old is Dick Wolf?!
- Been watching Perception where the lead character has delusions. The main delusion is of a woman he met years ago. This season that woman, Dr. Newsome, is part of the show as the real person and the delusion and the love triangle is between those three. Wow. Crazy does work on TV.