Dumbest thing I’ve ever heard of
Upward Basketball. Some friends’ kids are in it. Not sure if you’re aware of it but it’s a religious group that does sports. They play basketball but do not keep score. I think that’s stupid because it is important that children learn there are winners and losers at athletic contests. A child should learn about the thrill they get from winning and the sorrow they get from losing. But that’s not what makes Upward Basketball stupid. See, they do man-on-man coverage and each man on the team is assigned a skill level and is given a corresponding colored waistband. People on the other team have corresponding waistbands assigned by skill level. And you are paired against the man with the same color waistband on the other team for man-on-man coverage. So, if you totally suck at basketball, then you will be paired with someone else who totally sucks at basketball. If you’re a little Michael Jordon, you’ll be paired with another little Michael Jordan. So, we don’t keep score because we don’t want to focus on winning and losing. But if you suck, we’ll put a waistband on you letting everyone know that you suck.
Update: From comments, Sailorcourt says it’s socialist basketball. Because It’s great for the players that suck. heh.
January 16th, 2007 at 12:50 am
I thought it was a team sport. Why would individual player abilities matter that much?
January 16th, 2007 at 8:32 am
Sounds like Socialist basketball to me.
It’s great for the players that suck.
Little league baseball (at least around here) always bothered me for one reason: Everyone gets a trophy. Basically, what that means is that the trophies don’t mean a thing. Kids can put them on their dresser and pretend like they mean something, but in reality, it just means that they showed up. They didn’t have to have done anything special and their team didn’t have to have done anything special. It kind of defeats the purpose of the game in teaching life lessons about winning and losing, teamwork and perseverence in the face of adversity.
Perhaps that is why we have so many people with “give peace a chance” bumper stickers and who believe that the bad guys will leave them alone if they just treat them nicely. So many people who file lawsuits and press charges when they don’t get their way. So many people who simply give up on life and sink into depression and addiction. We have entire generations that grew up with no concept of how life works. All they know is that everyone is always supposed to win every time…no matter how poorly they actually performed.
My parents taught me that truly loving parents do the hard and heartbreaking work of teaching their kids the lessons they need to learn to be a healthy, happy member of society. The ones who fail to do that are selfish, narcissistic and care more about their own comfort level than they do about their kid’s futures. If you love them, you’ll do the right thing, not the easy thing.
January 16th, 2007 at 9:35 am
My son learned at an early age that losing sucks.
In everything he does, he says … I’m gonnna win and your gonna lose.
When he does lose, he says … lets do it again, I’m gonna win and your gonna lose.
Last night, at 4 years old, he finally figured out that no one can win at tic tac toe.
“What a dumb game” he said to me, “why would someone do something they couldn’t win?”
He then told me he never wanted to play it again. There were more fun things he could do.
I assume he means more challenging things, in which he could win (or lose) but the outcome would make him strive to improve each time.
I’m so proud of him.
January 16th, 2007 at 10:34 am
I must have played in the last non-commie little league (and soccer league before that). We actually had an all-star game/tournament. And the vast majority of the players did *not* make it into the game. (I’m 24–so it wasn’t *all* that long ago)
The real highlight of the game was that the little kids (the division I was in–first year of kid-pitch) got to play by the big-kid rules for those games. We could steal bases. It was awesome. Of course, I wasn’t the one to take advantage of it… but it was really cool throwing kids out at second. And we had to earn our way into those games. That was the best part.
January 16th, 2007 at 1:01 pm
Odd scenarios based on that system: A coach actually practices and trains his players until he no longer has anyone in the lowest skill division. This would mean that he would have to actually recruit an unskilled lout to the team lest he be beaten by default.
Imagine a team with a skilled player is playing a team without anyone of that level. He would be utterly ostracized on defense, perhaps he could camp just outside the key and do rebounds, but on offense no one would be allowed to stop him.
More likely, he wouldn’t be allowed to play at all. Tall poppies and self esteem.
January 16th, 2007 at 1:10 pm
This sounds silly, but the colored waistband showing your skill level is old hat: the martial arts have been doing that for centuries.
January 16th, 2007 at 2:24 pm
Cap’n Holly: Martial arts belts really aren’t relevant. We segregate competition by belt color ( assumed skill/experience level ), age, and weight. What we don’t do is let a yellow belt compete against a black belt then pretend everybody is a winner.
There is one exception I’ve seen. When a competitor shows up but has no peers against whom to compete, they get 1st by default, and we’ll usually let them compete against a higher rank in a ‘fun’ match so they actually get some experience. Of course, the higher rank is expected to be respectful and not beat the snot out of the lower rank.
January 16th, 2007 at 3:38 pm
In defense of Little League (my previous criticism notwithstanding) they DO encourage and foster competition. They do have winners and losers in the games above T-ball (which is for kids that can barely tie their shoes and is designed to give them some idea of what is expected of them after the ball is hit) and they still have the all-star selection process leading all the way up to the Little League World Series.
Granted, the selection process for the all-star team has as much to do with which parents contribute the most to the local league as it does with skill level…but that in itself teaches important life lessons.
January 16th, 2007 at 3:57 pm
the martial arts have been doing that for centuries.
How much of that is to prevent people from being injured? They don’t call them the “martial arts” for nothing.
It is also a method of demonstrating one’s progression through the skill levels, not a way of eliminating competition. There are still winners and losers of Martial Arts bouts and competitions.
The reason the Little League trophy thing bothered me is because a team could go the whole season without winning a game and get the same trophy as the players on a team that went undefeated.
It gives a false sense of accomplishment and eliminates incentive to try to improve.
There are divisions of skill level in all sports. That, in and of itself, is not a bad thing. The bad thing is the attempt to eliminate competition completely. The attempt to falsely bolster self-esteem and foster the illusion that “everyone is equal” in all things. It simply isn’t true. Some people simply are not suited for certain things. Some work harder than others and reap the rewards of their work. And, number one…no matter how good you think you are at something…there’s always someone better…and, as a corollary to that, there’s always room for improvement.
January 16th, 2007 at 4:54 pm
Of course actually learning anything…
…anything at all…
… requires your association with people who are better than you.
You leran more from losing to a superior opponent than from winning against an inferior one.
These churchies may be stupid as hell, but they certainly got our attention, and that after all is the only thing that counts.
January 16th, 2007 at 5:27 pm
I’ve coached my oldest son’s soccer team for a few seasons and don’t generally keep score. At the beginner level, when all the kids are 4-5 years old, keeping score is pretty pointless. Often the entire game rests on who has the biggest kid or which kid has bigger brothers and sisters that have given them a taste of the game. Very often it’s just clusters of kids congregating around the ball wherever it happens to be while kicking wildly at anything that moves.
My son played with 6-8 year olds the past couple of seasons, and they’ve begun keeping score themselves, regardless of who else is or is not. I may know the score, but at this level I don’t bother to keep score because winning really isn’t part of my goal yet.
Having said all that, my own coaching philosophy, especially with children as young as I’ve worked with is very simple. Do your best. I tell the kids at each practice and game that winning is secondary to me so long as they are always doing their very best. I expect commitment from them at soccer time, and I expect that they always do their best and always work to learn more and do better next time.
Finally, after making a post out of a comment, as I mentioned, the kids know very early on how to keep score. All the adults may pretend not to know who is winning, but the kids certainly do if they can count. We may pretend that winning is not important to us, and we may mean it, but no kid wants to lose. As adults, we should be more concerned with each child developing fully than the win/loss stats. Doing your best in any endeavor is more important than winning.
Oh, yeah, the colored belts thing sucks. Kids know if another kid is better at basketball or soccer or whatever. The belt is just a way the grown ups can enforce that, and they don’t need that from us. I don’t want my kid progressing through basketball belts. I want him accepting that he won’t always be the best, but even the best can be beaten if you try hard enough.
January 16th, 2007 at 7:35 pm
Second place is the first loser…just like the parents who enroll their children in this bastardization of basketball. I wonder if they encourage their children to enroll in this because they really do suck at sports and dont want to see them get their feelings hurt by losing/sitting on the bench…OR…because the parents are/were fracking losers when they were kids.