A few days ago Matt posted a little mini-rant on how Little League Baseball shouldn’t be about winning or losing. If you’ll pardon my expression: horse-hockey.
I’m not sure what sissy liberal element got into Matt, but there are two huge problems with the proposition:
First, children need to learn, at a very early age, how to lose. It’s a key element of competition. There’s a whole lot more to competing than just trying to win. Learning to deal with losses are probably even more important than learning how to play the sport, or learning about teamwork, or anything else… because no matter how great you are, you’re going to lose somewhere, sometime, at something.
That’s not to say we want our kids to like losing. That’s just as bad, and I’m pretty sure that the government deports kids like that to the United States of Europe.
Second, Little League (and similar) need to teach children to differentiate between “learning” and “competing.” Is your league about “learning”? Then don’t separate out into permanent teams. Mix kids randomly, and change them up a few times throughout the season. Hold practices together as a league and have the leagues head coaches instruct the kids according to their specialty. If you put them in groups, give them group names, uniforms, and so on — if you give them a group identity it’s important to teach kids that they need to work hard for their group members. Not for some commie principle like helping out those who suck, but because only through that sort of activity does the group as a whole succeed. This is a key component of teamwork. If your kid grows up believing that the most important thing is how they do, and not the outcome of the team, that can become a problem.
Kids don’t “win” or “lose” practice. Why not? Because the purpose there is learning, not competing. Come Saturday morning, though, the purpose is competing, and learning to compete.
From a coach’s/athlete’s perspective, it’s absolutely imperative that kids are taught the correct habits from day one. One of those correct habits (in baseball), is intelligent base-running. In Jr. High and High School baseball base-running was my specialty and I’ll be the first one to tell you that if you don’t have a gut, killer instinct about taking new bases, there are going to be times that you get thrown out or don’t go at all when you should. Does that matter in little league? No, probably not. But it does on larger stages, and if you wait until your kid is a 7th grader to try to instill a killer-instinct for base-running, it’s probably too late. And, because such a large part of most of our competitive sports hinge on making the correct decisions instantaneously, this is true in a lot of other aspects also.
If you teach the kids a sport in a “kid gloves” sort of environment, they’re going to play soft and weak, and when they finally get to a level where that’s not the norm, they’re going to have to adapt (and quickly) or get left behind. The kids who were taught properly from day one will not have that problem.
So while it might make everyone in a given community happy, all you’re doing is dropping the potential skill level of everyone who’s participating. If you could keep that environment insulated, and make sure everyone learned to play poorly to start with, this might work.
But while you’re doing that, I’m going to be teaching my son or daughter how to play the game properly, and when they all get to Junior High, my kids will have an advantage because their learning curve is not quite as sharp.
If your argument is that Little League games are tantamount to practice, my answer is still the same. You should practice how you want to play. And, I guess, if you want to play soft, then that’s how you should practice.
None of this is to say, however, that we should teach our kids a “win at all costs” mentality. Sportsmanship, however, need not be isolated from competition to flourish. In fact, if you teach sportsmanship in a neutered environment, why would you suspect that it would remain when there are actually things on the line?
Put another way: How do you teach kids the sportsmanship of winning and losing when there aren’t winners or losers?
…just my 20 cents.
March 24th, 2006 at 2:36 pm
Thanks for the follow-up, a couple thoughts:
First of all, I think I made pretty clear my comments are limited to very early level youth sports. Obviously we aren’t going to have 7th graders playing scoreless contests. I agree with you that baserunning is important, but when you’re playing at a level that baserunning decisions are based on a mathematical calculation that 80% of the time a 6 year old isn’t going to be able to throw out a kid running to third, that isn’t about learning “sharp decision making skills,” it’s based on the fact that little kids aren’t good enough to be gunning down runners from leftfield. This is, mind you, also the reason that lower-level leagues often have pitching machines and don’t allow base stealing…because the kids just aren’t good enough at that point to handle playing under such a system.
Secondly, I agree completely with you that learning about winning and losing is important, I just don’t think it’s more important than learning how to play the game, sportsmanship, etc. I’m not saying we need to protect kids from losing, but I don’t think teaching them about winning/losing is the primary purpose of youth sports. The reason we don’t redivide teams every year is because there is value to playing on a team, learning how to work with certain people (some of whom you don’t get along with), etc.
Last point, do you really believe kids aren’t going to be competitve about these games? There may not be an official scoreboard, but these kids are learning how to compete just fine. Like I said, competition isn’t going anywhere…I’d rather teach skills at the early levels though such that when it comes time to keep official score, the kids will all be better at what they’re doing, and (perhaps) we’ll have an even higher level of competition because of it.
March 24th, 2006 at 6:49 pm
a) Never once did I say you’d have 7th graders running scoreless games. But if you’re going to play a game at all, not playing to win/lose is pointless. You might as well be having scrimmage at a practice.
b) Teaching skills for the game is only important for kids who actually want to be there and want to continue with the game. As you noted, not all of those kids do. Learning to deal with winning and losing is good for everyone.
c) If you have game-play issues, an easy solution might be to just say “Oh, ok, well, we’re just not going to keep score” but that’s not going to make the kids magically able to throw or (as you pointed out) less desirious to run bases on hits to the outfield. If you have game-play problems, change the rules.
Example: little kids cannot, generally kick PATs. The solution football leagues have come up with is not to play scoreless games, it’s to make running the ball in worth 1 point and kicking it in worth 2.
Bottom line: teaching skills is not mutually exclusive with playing scored games.
March 25th, 2006 at 10:15 pm
Fair points…I do have to admit I’m more supportive of the league’s efforts to eliminate homeruns than to eliminate the scorekeeping. Limiting a runner to second base on each hit might be a better policy than eliminating scorekeeping alltogether.
As for the kids that don’t want to be there…if they don’t care about the outcome, are we really teaching them anything about winning and losing? Just a thought.
My bottom line: While not mutually exclusive, the emphasis in the way the rules are structured should be on teaching the game, sportsmanship, and teamwork.