So a couple of hours ago I felt all moralized and decided to give my two cents on what happened in a high school basketball game. Turns out what I read plus some chance meetings with some hypocritical bastards prompted the reactionary post but it also resulted in something else: someone commenting and offering a differnt side.
Keven has his own blog and today happened to pass by that last post I blasted off for no reason and he had some very interesting things to add to clear up the situation about the teams, the game, the outcome and how the game was played. Here's what he had to add to my rant:
"I can see your point, but there's something more to this story.
Covenant is a State Championship contender high school with 402 students. Dallas Academy has 20 students (total) and is winless in EIGHT YEARS.
Now the problem here is that these two teams have no business playing each other, and if they do have to play each other then wouldn't that be the Covenant's coach's chance to play some of the players he wouldn't usually use?
But no, this was all about the teaching the kids that excellence is all that counts. The Covenant coach talks about not running up the score, but what the hell was that if it's not running up the score. There's winning, and there's this."
So thanks to the clarification, now I not only am more on the side of what was commented by the administration, but wholly focused on how much I was led on by the news, though let us not forget the other event that prompted the reply. Oh well, just goes to show that sometimes jumping to a conclusion can often land you in a pile of poo. My thanks to Kev for the additional insight though.
Cheers
3 comments:
I don't know where I stand on this. The athlete in me would have treated it as an exhibition game, and (for the Covenant side), played my bench players.
Now, I realize that these two teams probably shouldn't have played each other. But guess what, they did.
So since they did...as in life, there are winners and losers. The side that "wasn't good" lost. And they lost bad. How exactly is that newsworthy?
If I went into a job interview, competing against a complete invalid...and I got the job, would I have to shame myself into thinking that maybe I should have given a less stellar performance? I sure hope not.
I hate to ramble, so I'll stop. To sum up: agree with the coach, disagree with Covenant's administration, and props to Dallas Academy for being tough and not whining to the media.
My qualifications for commenting:
--took a coaching course taught by a former U.S. and World Cup women's field hockey coach
--coached Little League baseball
--played 12 years of soccer, 13 years of baseball
--about to be a father
--I live in the DFW area
When it's all said and done, the blame falls in this order:
--winning coach
--losing coach
--parents in attendance
The winning coach should have stopped the game at halftime, when it was "only" 59-0. I would have gone to the losing coach, and said "let's end this now," and been done with it. There is no need to embarrass young athletes at that extreme level.
If the winning coach didn't have the class or brains to do that, the losing coach should have stopped it at halftime. I would have approached the winning coach and told him it's a forfeit. If he didn't want to stop it, I'd take my team off the court.
And if I'm a parent of a child in that game on either team, and I see no action being taken at halftime, I ask my coach to act. If s/he doesn't, I take my kid off the court.
The true spirit of sportsmanship includes knowing when you've beaten somebody.
Kids don't need to be overprotected, but this was an extreme case where nobody was a "winner."
In developing young athletes - and therefore young people - the responsiblity falls on their coaches and parents.
Sadly, they all fell short that day.
Well, there was a "winner." They won by 100 points.
Why would a losing coach want to end it, at any point? If, in this day in age, a loss can be a (spiritual?) victory for a team...even scoring 2 points would have been a W for them. Lord knows (literally?) they had all game to do so.
I played soccer for 15 years. We played the NY State champions every year in high school, and every year we lost, 12-0, 17-0, 13-0. We never stopped the game, no parents cried about the loss, and the administration never once said a peep.
Would it have been any worse if the score had been 100-25, and the winning team had given God their alms after the game? Can it be called running up "the score" if the other team doesn't score?
This is a "get over it" moment. I think the losing team has.
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