Helicopter parents vs sports

[drewboy12]

North America is become a bunch of babies... enough said.

[WhiteTiger]

This doesn't sit very well with me. I can see not really keeping score in 5-6 under, but kids aren't (hopefully) that dumb, and will figure it out pretty quick.

I don't know about playing "to increase skills for later use", either. If they kids have no drive or motivation to do better, why would they want to increase their skills? So they can not keep score until 20? This just seems like a bad idea to me. It does put me in mind of a conversation I frequently have with my lead hand at work though.

She says "Perfection is not required."
I always reply "If you don't demand excellence, you're only going to get sh**."

[Phanuthier]

Originally Posted by WhiteTiger

This doesn't sit very well with me. I can see not really keeping score in 5-6 under, but kids aren't (hopefully) that dumb, and will figure it out pretty quick.

I don't know about playing "to increase skills for later use", either. If they kids have no drive or motivation to do better, why would they want to increase their skills? So they can not keep score until 20? This just seems like a bad idea to me. It does put me in mind of a conversation I frequently have with my lead hand at work though.

She says "Perfection is not required."
I always reply "If you don't demand excellence, you're only going to get sh**."

I guess my point was, there should be more organized (community organized?) pickup soccer games as an alternative just for fun. (Not necessarily a no score game, but maybe alternatives too that lets players gamble and try new things without consequence.) I know when I was younger, I didn't have any problem with drive or motivation. After school or on weekends, I would play some 2 vs 2, 3 vs 3 etc or 10 vs 10 during recess for hours. Same with hockey, basketball, tennis, all of it. The drive and motivation should be, its more fun if you play harder. But I love sports, even now as an adult, and I'm usually playing some sort of sport every day, whether its organized league or pickup.

[GGG]

I remember when I was Six playing soccer in the summer and no one kept score.

But every game we new if we won or not. Kids are competitive, they enjoy winning. I think that playoffs and a league champion and coaches caring about winning probably shouldn't start until 12 but whats the point of playing games if you aren't playing to win.

It would be having adult rec sports leagues scoreless. No one is really playing rec because they want to be in a competive league but you still want to win your games.

Playing to win also brings focus to the game. If you have ever played pick up hockey vs a league game you understand the difference when there are standings and scores people play more seriously and try harder. The same would apply to 10 year olds.

[ma-skis.com]

Originally Posted by GGG

Playing to win also brings focus to the game. If you have ever played pick up hockey vs a league game you understand the difference when there are standings and scores people play more seriously and try harder. The same would apply to 10 year olds.

What about 10 year olds who aren't mature enough to deal with winning and losing highly competitive games. Some kids aren't at that age. A lot of kids quit sports for this reason exactly.

I see this as a way to keep more kids involved for a longer period of time.

I find the responses on this site to be skewed considering we're all sports fans and probably enjoy playing and competing in sports. Nothing wrong with kids being a winner, problem is when they start calling other kids losers.

[Lego Man]

Originally Posted by ma-skis.com

What about 10 year olds who aren't mature enough to deal with winning and losing highly competitive games. Some kids aren't at that age. A lot of kids quit sports for this reason exactly.

Kids who are not mature enough will deal with it and grow more mature because of it. If kids quit because they can't handle losing then I'd lay the blame right on the parents. It's just a game and obviously the parents have not spent the proper time teaching them about the nature of sports.

I remember being 7-8 years old and playing street hockey with everyone around the neighborhood and winning was everything. It was the whole point. Sure we played for fun, sure we goofed off - but in the end if we lost then we would just deal with it.

My goal in life is to raise my kids with the same values and knowledge I was raised with. It's too bad I'm in the minority.

[Lego Man]

Originally Posted by ma-skis.com

I find the responses on this site to be skewed considering we're all sports fans and probably enjoy playing and competing in sports. Nothing wrong with kids being a winner, problem is when they start calling other kids losers.

I guess we should focus on teaching Sportsmanship then.

[ma-skis.com]

Originally Posted by mpaca

I guess we should focus on teaching Sportsmanship then.

maybe parents don't do enough of that now and focus too much on the score and that's why we have these governing bodies making these decisions for parents, kind of the same way schools are in charge of bullies and the government for whether or not we can change our music in our car while we drive.

here's the other thing, Hockey Canada takes pride on winning at the absolute highest levels in sport. why would they implement these things if they didn't see results begin to trickle in. I find it hard to believe that they would be self-sabotaging their own program.

Maybe the question is, does learning to win / compete at age 8 or age 10 make that big of a difference in a person's development as an athlete / person?

[Lego Man]

You might be right. It could be that children don't really develop the sort of skill that leads them to excel later in life until they reach the age of 12-13. The goal would be to keep as many children interested in playing from ages 5-12 to maximize the number of skilled teens being developed later on.

[pylon]

I don't know about you guys, but I still had fun when I lost, and had even more fun when I won. As far back as I could remember as a kid, I would check the score sheet after hockey games, and baseball games to make sure they didn't screw up my stats, way before I was 12. There is nothing wrong with tracking your success at any age.

I still have old score sheets my old man would photo copy for me where I got hat tricks, home runs...etc. He was a really good artist and would draw neat little 'Elstonesque' caricatures on them of me scoring a goal or hit a ball whatever. As a kid that was really cool, especially since my report cards usually resulted in groundings and punishment. It felt good to be good at at least something once and a while, when I was struggling so hard to do well in school.

[Jimmy Stang]

Originally Posted by ma-skis.com

I see this as a way to keep more kids involved for a longer period of time.

I actually think that it would do the opposite. At 12, if I had a choice to play in a league where competition was frowned upon and one where it was encouraged, I know exactly which one I'd be playing in. I'm not an overly competitive person either, but I honestly don't see the point of playing sports if there's no incentive to excel. At that age, you're well aware of how many goals went in the net and whether you won or not, even if the league insists that nobody did.

Sportsmanship and team building are very important, don't get me wrong, but these elements of the game can be taught without pretending that 12-year-olds can't handle winning and losing. How can you teach respect for your opponent when, quite literally, they're not actually your opponent?

I've played on some terrible teams in soccer, hockey, etc. Even my high school football team was brutal most of the time because we were a small high school. The rare victories on those teams were sweeter than anything else, although we had no choice but to learn to lose graciously most of the time.

I'd rather lose honestly and learn how to handle it than to be sent onto the field aimlessly. I can say that, without a doubt, if my parents registered me into this league when I was 12 I would have been telling them to put me into another sport instead. Tim bits hockey, young kids soccer are much different, but pandering to the fragile parents is going to deter those that want their kids to experience all of the benefits of sport, including losing.

Like I said earlier, if they are going to do this, they should give parents the choice to register them in the watered down version or the real version. If they impose the scoreless version on everyone at that age, they're going to lose people to other sports. I'd be interested to see how many people would actually want a 12-year-old playing in a meaningless kickaround each week. My guess is not many.

[macker]

^
I agree...1/2 of what sports can teach you is learned through failure and losing. Don't deprieve kids of the adversity that losing can bring and the acomplishment of battling through it. Part of the appeal of Sports is to teach skills that can be used later in life and without keeping score it kinda takes the sport out of sports. By age 7-8 it doesn't really matter as even with 5 point spread limits kids are still able to tell you what the true score was and which kid got which goal etc. Idea doesn't add up....

[firebug]

It's not surprising, that on a website formed to follow the scores and standings of a game that we are not even playing in, most of us here find this recommendation ridiculous.

The challenge with youth sports is that there are far more kids playing at age 8 then at age 12. Why are they dropping out?

Could it be that the sport's organizers have determined that large numbers of children are no longer playing because of the competitive nature?

Would sport in Canada be improved if sacrificing score-keeping means that thousands more children will continue to be involved in the sport through adolescence?

Maybe kids are more bothered by losing than they are willing to admit to keen coaches or involved parents?

[corporatejay]

The challenge with youth sports is that there are far more kids playing at age 8 then at age 12. Why are they dropping out?

Increased commitments outside of sport including school and other ECs would be my guess.

[habernac]

Originally Posted by corporatejay

Increased commitments outside of sport including school and other ECs would be my guess.

and some people just figure out that they're not athletically inclined.

[firebug]

Originally Posted by habernac

and some people just figure out that they're not athletically inclined.

Are they disinclined because they needed to take a few years more to develop before they starting to emphasize winning?

[habernac]

Originally Posted by firebug

Are they disinclined because they needed to take a few years more to develop before they starting to emphasize winning?

Don't know, I'm not one of those people. My poor uncoordinated brother is. He quit hockey at age 13 because he just wasn't that great at it. Competition didn't have anything to do with it.

[Traditional_Ale]

Man this thread pisses me off.

I agree with CaptainCrunch. Our society is getting more and more pansified every day. This next generation of children are going to be the worst yet for being unprepared for the real world.

The reason you play sports is to win. Having fun and doing your best is fine and all, but the point is was and always should be to win.

[SeeBass]

I think they should do this right after they remove all of the scoring and competition out of video games that kids play.

[Traditional_Ale]

Originally Posted by SeeBass

I think they should do this right after they remove all of the scoring and competition out of video games that kids play.

Moreover, what kind of kid who plays violent video games at home could be movitvated to play a sport where everything is lollipops and rainbows. Without their being the incentive to win, as in being the winner and not the loser, the kid might as well stay home as they're going to get more satisfaction racking up a "score" in Halo.