Sports is a GREAT instructor of children, because it teaches you, early on, how cut-throat competition can be. Every team wants to be the champion, but only one team can, the other dozen or so teams are various shades of “losers,” at least to the kids themselves.
As much fun as winning is, it’s losing that really builds character. Every kid should suffer through at least one hopeless losing season and have to drag him or herself out there for “team pride,” which is REALLY self-pride.
In some quarters the concept of “winning and losing” are deemed (by pussy-parents) to be “too potentially damaging to a child’s self-esteem.” So in those locales, scores aren’t kept as if that makes it so that “everybody wins.” Whadda bunch of dopes!
Don’t worry so much about little Johnny’s self-esteem Mom and Dad, worry about him hitting the curve ball, OK!
Recently there have been a couple of sports stories that really shake your faith in America.
The first broke this past May, when Jaime Nared (above bottom pic), who is just 12 years old and already nearly 6-foot-1 and apparently is blessed with Jordanesque skills.
In basketball games, the Beaverton, Oregon 12-year-old can more than hold her own against the boys, sometimes scoring 30 points or more.
And that’s become a problem.
“She's so good,” Michael Abraham said, “she makes the boys look like scrubs.” So she's being punished, told she can no longer play on boys teams at The Hoop, a private Beaverton basketball facility that runs a league in which Abraham's teams compete.
Guys!?
Coaches!?
Why not show a little backbone instead? If someone is scoring at will, field a couple of goons to “deliver a message.” Nothing says, “Don’t showboat in our building" more clearly than dropping a player on his or her ass a few times!
I dated a woman who was a leading scorer in women’s collegiate basketball when she was in college. God bless her, she insisted on playing in playground games with me against the guys. She quickly found out that chivalry is very much dead, at least in the sense that no guy is going to let some woman embarass him on the basketball court, at least not without making her pay. She was good about it, noting "fouls are just part of the game." Believe me, I KNEW that first-hand, being decked pretty regularly myself. Natalie played well and scorched a fair number of guys, and most of all, she was a good sport and took winning and losing with equal grace, which is the true mark of a champion.
Now, nine-year-old Jericho Scott (above top pic) is such a good baseball player, that he too, is being deemed “too good.”
The right-hander already has a fastball that tops out at about 40 mph. He throws so hard that the Youth Baseball League of New Haven told his coach that the boy could not pitch any more. When Jericho took the mound anyway last week, the opposing team forfeited the game, packed its gear and left, his coach said.
Way to teach your kids how to be wimps for life losers!
Worse still, is the specter of favoritism in this case, as Jericho's coach and parents say the boy is being unfairly targeted because he turned down an invitation to join the defending league champion, which is sponsored by an employer of one of the league's administrators.
Jericho instead joined a team sponsored by Will Power Fitness. The team was 8-0 and on its way to the playoffs when Jericho was banned from pitching.
"I think it's discouraging when you're telling a 9-year-old you're too good at something," said his mother, Nicole Scott.
Competition is GOOD for kids, just as it’s good for businesses...and, to be truthful, for EVERYONE! It helps less talented kids learn to improvise and adapt. Sometimes you’ve got to bend the rules to make things work for you, sometimes you’ve got to deck the other guy to send the proper message.
That’s competition!
That’s sportsmanship!
As much fun as winning is, it’s losing that really builds character. Every kid should suffer through at least one hopeless losing season and have to drag him or herself out there for “team pride,” which is REALLY self-pride.
In some quarters the concept of “winning and losing” are deemed (by pussy-parents) to be “too potentially damaging to a child’s self-esteem.” So in those locales, scores aren’t kept as if that makes it so that “everybody wins.” Whadda bunch of dopes!
Don’t worry so much about little Johnny’s self-esteem Mom and Dad, worry about him hitting the curve ball, OK!
Recently there have been a couple of sports stories that really shake your faith in America.
The first broke this past May, when Jaime Nared (above bottom pic), who is just 12 years old and already nearly 6-foot-1 and apparently is blessed with Jordanesque skills.
In basketball games, the Beaverton, Oregon 12-year-old can more than hold her own against the boys, sometimes scoring 30 points or more.
And that’s become a problem.
“She's so good,” Michael Abraham said, “she makes the boys look like scrubs.” So she's being punished, told she can no longer play on boys teams at The Hoop, a private Beaverton basketball facility that runs a league in which Abraham's teams compete.
Guys!?
Coaches!?
Why not show a little backbone instead? If someone is scoring at will, field a couple of goons to “deliver a message.” Nothing says, “Don’t showboat in our building" more clearly than dropping a player on his or her ass a few times!
I dated a woman who was a leading scorer in women’s collegiate basketball when she was in college. God bless her, she insisted on playing in playground games with me against the guys. She quickly found out that chivalry is very much dead, at least in the sense that no guy is going to let some woman embarass him on the basketball court, at least not without making her pay. She was good about it, noting "fouls are just part of the game." Believe me, I KNEW that first-hand, being decked pretty regularly myself. Natalie played well and scorched a fair number of guys, and most of all, she was a good sport and took winning and losing with equal grace, which is the true mark of a champion.
Now, nine-year-old Jericho Scott (above top pic) is such a good baseball player, that he too, is being deemed “too good.”
The right-hander already has a fastball that tops out at about 40 mph. He throws so hard that the Youth Baseball League of New Haven told his coach that the boy could not pitch any more. When Jericho took the mound anyway last week, the opposing team forfeited the game, packed its gear and left, his coach said.
Way to teach your kids how to be wimps for life losers!
Worse still, is the specter of favoritism in this case, as Jericho's coach and parents say the boy is being unfairly targeted because he turned down an invitation to join the defending league champion, which is sponsored by an employer of one of the league's administrators.
Jericho instead joined a team sponsored by Will Power Fitness. The team was 8-0 and on its way to the playoffs when Jericho was banned from pitching.
"I think it's discouraging when you're telling a 9-year-old you're too good at something," said his mother, Nicole Scott.
Competition is GOOD for kids, just as it’s good for businesses...and, to be truthful, for EVERYONE! It helps less talented kids learn to improvise and adapt. Sometimes you’ve got to bend the rules to make things work for you, sometimes you’ve got to deck the other guy to send the proper message.
That’s competition!
That’s sportsmanship!
