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IN THIS ISSUE: FRONT ROW Youth- and School-Based Sports: At What Age Should Competition Be Introduced? SIDELINES Trivia Test: What Did John Wooden Mistakenly Leave Out of His Pyramid of Success?
YOUTH- AND SCHOOL-BASED SPORTS At What Age Should Competition Be Introduced? An interesting article in Newsweek investigated the age-old debate of “Should youth sports be fun or competitive?” On one side are the “play to win” traditionalists who feel sports have become sissified because the current mantra is to emphasize fun over winning: everyone gets a turn at bat, scorekeeping is verboten, standings are banished, coaches are muzzled so as not to upset the little tykes, and nobody wins or loses. The result: Kids grow up soft and ill-equipped to adjust to life later on. “Like it or not, life keeps score,” Richard Lerner, professor of psychology at Tufts University, told the magazine. Rachael Lever of the Salt Lake City Parenting Examiner says “fun policy” leagues are wrong. “It doesn’t teach them about being a gracious loser. It doesn’t teach them about being a gracious winner. They gain a false sense of fairness. If no one ever gets out, they don’t learn the real rules of the game.” Teaching children that everything has to be fair sends the wrong message, Lever says. “People lose games. People have accidents. People die young. You don’t always get an equal portion of ice cream. Sometimes your words are misinterpreted. Sometimes you get blamed for something you didn’t do. Life is not fair. But it’s a great learning experience, and we are taking that away from our children.” Child psychologist Tamar Chansky, Ph.D., says children are much more resilient than we think. Protecting them from life’s ups and downs is a disservice. “If we want kids to see how they can ride out disappointment,” he told the magazine, “we need to let them stay on the ride.” On the other side are the “play to have fun” proponents who say the concept of winning and competition shouldn’t be introduced to children until age 10. Before age 5, most don’t understand what winning or losing are about. At that age, the focus should be on fun, skill development, coordination, and physical fitness. That’s the time to try different sports and positions, not to learn what the final score was or who got the biggest trophy. Between 5 and 8, children should be introduced to the concept of rules and how to cooperate. “Cooperation is the foundation of ethical competition,” Jay Coakley, professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Colorado, told the magazine. “Unless they have those kinds of experiences, they’re going to turn into difficult-to-coach 12-year-olds.” By age 10, most kids are ready to keep score and compete to win. “Kids are going to lose in life,” Chansky said. “If we explain that that’s a terrible thing, they’re going to become competition-avoidant. Instead, use the opportunity to instill meaning in winning and losing and that the way we improve at anything is by trying.” [blog.newsweek.com, 9/2/09; examiner.com, 4/9/09]
Report Card on Pregame Handshakes The NCAA and the American Football Coaches Association kicked off the 2009 season with a “Respect Weekend” in which all teams were encouraged to hold a pregame handshake ceremony to promote sportsmanship. How did it go? First, the players. With players cranked up before the opening games of the season, the concern was that one player saying something could mutate the handshake line into a riot. Didn’t happen. Not one pregame incident anywhere. A Second, the spectators. On talk shows and sports blogs around the country, the majority of fans were fervently against pregame handshakes. When teams met in the middle of the field across the country, would they be drowned out by a chorus of boos? Didn’t happen. On TV screens across the country, stadium crowds spontaneously stood and cheered. A Third, the coaches. With so many coaches growling at the formality, the concern was that colleges would refuse to do it. Didn’t happen. Other than Oklahoma State and Illinois, the vast majority of schools complied graciously. For every Joe Paterno (Penn State) saying he didn’t need handshake ceremonies to instill sportsmanship, there was a Jim Tressell (Ohio State) saying the opportunity to shake hands with Midshipmen of the U.S. Naval Academy “was something our kids will probably never forget.” B Fourth, the aftermath. The NCAA and AFCA hoped the pregame gesture would reduce bad sportsmanship and carry over the camaraderie to the postgame atmosphere. Didn’t happen. After the Boise State-Oregon game, victorious Boise State players taunted Oregon running back LeGarrette Blount for making comments about them earlier. Blount retaliated with a sucker punch, for which he was suspended for the entire season. C- Fifth, the trivia question. In all the hoopla surrounding the handshake weekend, a little-known fact was obscured: One football conference has been successfully conducting pregame handshakes since 2003. Which conference is it? If you guessed the Missouri Valley Football Conference, give yourself an A. [indystar.com, 9/9/09]
Too Many Faults to Go Around When Serena Williams was kicked out of the women’s semifinal match at the U.S. Open last month for breaking a racquet and verbally threatening a lineswoman who called a foot fault on her, it wasn’t the only demonstration of poor judgment and behavior stemming from the incident. Here were the other faults: Serena Williams. Compounding her outburst, she double-faulted during her press conference by saying 1) other players have behaved worse and said worse things (so that made her action okay?), and 2) she cited John McEnroe as an influence for her on-court passion (what, Ilie Nastase was taken?). John McEnroe. His call for today’s pros to be less robotic and exhibit the passion he used to display is like Ron Artest telling players they should mingle more with fans. McEnroe’s perpetual chuckling and playful “Don’t look at me” wink-wink comments whenever someone acts up on the court is no longer cute, if it ever was. Nor are his constant commercials that inexplicably play up his “You can’t be serious!” trademark outbursts of the past. Do he and Bobby Knight have the same moronic ad agent? CBS and ESPN. What were they thinking when, during a rain delay, they aired classic matches showing the worst displays of on-court behavior in tennis history from McEnroe, Jimmy Connors, and Ilie Nastase, often to supportive crowds? The lineswoman. She needs to take a diversity training class. She told the court judge that Serena Williams literally threatened her life. Please. As Michael Kimmel wrote on Huffingtonpost.com, would she have felt so threatened had she been yelled at by perky, pretty, little teenager Melanie Oudin? “Let’s face it, it’s different when black people get angry,” Kimmel wrote. “Being a 58-year-old Harvard professor with a cane didn’t protect Henry Louis Gates when he lost his cool. The fans booed Serena. But those same fans found John McEnroe’s antics cute and Jimmy Connors’s tirades energizing. Memo to Venus Williams and James Blake: Do not lose your temper. Ever.” The media. When will you cut athletes of color a break? You continually judge their behavior and conduct by a different set of rules, wrote Jack Halberstam on bullybloggers.wordpress.com. “Any kind of showy behavior by athletes of color draws negative attention while almost any kind of bad behavior by white athletes is thought of as ‘spirited.’ “When a Williams sister wins easily, it is called boring; when she fights hard, she is labeled erratic; when they question a call, they are charged with petulance; when they don’t, they are pegged as indifferent to the sport.” Professional Tennis. When will you cut female athletes a break? Two days after Williams’s outburst, for which she was disqualified and fined and, according to many, should have been suspended, Roger Federer hurled an f-bomb at a judge (not a linesman) and nothing happened. “There were no press conference apologies from Federer and there were no calls for him to be suspended, fined, or sanctioned,” wrote Dave Zirin in The Nation. “The double standard is enough to make you want to swallow your tennis ball.”
JOCKS BEHAVING EXCEPTIONALLY Classy Runback When Arkansas high schools Yellville-Summit and Cave City met last month, the atmosphere was anything but joyful. A week before the game, a truck carrying five Yellville-Summit players swerved to avoid an obstruction and tumbled off the road. One died and four were injured. At Cave City, newly transferred Thamail Morgan carried some baggage into the game, too. At his previous school, he was an all-star on both offense and defense. In a state playoff game, he had 15 tackles, a sack, and two forced fumbles on defense and 145 yards receiving and two touchdowns on offense. Then he violated a school rule that banned him from athletics for a year. Overnight, feelers from Arkansas, Florida State, Mississippi evaporated. He was forced to transfer to Cave City. Before the game, both teams met at midfield for a moment of remembrance for the Yellville-Summit player who died, and both teams wore his number on their helmets. Cave City was highly favored and jumped to a quick 21-0 first-quarter lead. Yellville-Summit clearly wasn’t into it. Cave City coach Jon Bradley and his players wanted to win but they felt bad doing it. They didn’t want to run up the score, so Bradley started substituting his kids. With time running down in the last quarter and Cave City leading 34-16, Yellville-Summit kicked off one last time. Receiving the ball was Thamail Morgan. “Before the game, we talked about being classy,” Morgan told Luke Matheson at arkansasvarsity.com. “[Yellville-Summit] told us they did not want us to feel sorry for them and did not want us to back off because of what happened. They are some really cool cats, and I wish them the best of luck with their healing process and the rest of the season.” Breaking tackles, Morgan streaked from sideline to sideline and broke into the clear. Then, just before he crossed the goal line, he stopped, took a step back, and kneeled down, ending the game. Maybe those big-school feelers will return once more when Morgan’s display of character gets out. Coach Bradley, who took a chance on him, said he’s had many talks with the young man, but none were about his behavior. “He’s not a discipline problem. He’s too good of an athlete and too good of a young man. He’s showing people he’s doing the right thing.” [arkansasvarsity.rivals.com, 9/24/09]
MICHAEL JOSEPHSON'S COMMENTARY
I once had a conversation with a successful women’s basketball coach who complained about the prevalent technique of players illegally clipping a shooter’s arms low on the elbow that’s difficult to detect by officials. She said she was unable to convince the powers that be to enforce the rules, so to stay competitive, she now coaches her athletes how to commit this foul. I offered them both a solution: Since both techniques had practically become an accepted part of the game, why not change the rules and make them legal? No, no, no, they said. That would be a bad idea. They favored the existing rules. What’s going on here? I’ve written before about gamesmanship theory. Whether it’s in sports, politics, or business, a prevalent attitude about competition is that you must continually look for an edge. Gamesmanship endorses not only “whatever you can get away with” strategies but it views rules as simply obstacles to overcome with cleverness. The result is, cheating becomes the norm, forcing honorable people to compromise their integrity by adopting the morality of their least principled opponent. And then they delude themselves into believing it’s okay. This is Michael Josephson reminding you that character counts. For an archive of Mr. Josephson’s commentaries, click here.
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Cheating and Gamesmanship
