Note: My rant below, as brought to my attention by the Bolton Braves, was ill-stated. I have altered it appropriately. I had failed to make it clear that the non-scorekeeping was only for the youngest age level, and only last year; something I knew, but had failed to articulate in my post by accident. My thoughts on the process, of course, remain the same. My apologies for my failure to speak clearly earlier.
If Mark gets to rant, so do I. One of my regular irritants has once again reared its ugly head, and I’m interested to find out if I’m alone in this world. The background of the story for me is that I work in sponsorships and webmastering, as a volunteer, with the Bolton Braves. They’re the local baseball organization for young kids here in Bolton.
Here in Canada Tim Horton’s, when they’re not pimping the black will they call coffee, also sponsor entire sports leagues that don’t keep score and award MVP trophies to every child that participates. Last year the Braves decided to make the move towards not keeping score for T-ball (young kids) only, although they switched back to “original” format this year. The Tim Horton’s idea, of course, being that kids will play the game for the joy of playing, not to win or lose. Their general belief tends to be that kids shouldn’t experience losing because it’s harmful to their emotional growth.
Horsecrap.

As a child who played sports, we kept score. Even when someone else wasn’t keeping score, we kept score. We knew if we were losing or winning, and if we were winning, we teased the team we were beating. At the end of the year we had to win the important games or we wouldn’t win an award (typically only for first through third, meaning the losers of the consolation game left with nothing). Furthermore, one child in the entire league won the MVP. Do we think children are so daft that they have no idea what the concept of an MVP is? That they don’t understand if they suck at the sport they have no place holding an individual award? Is the general idea of youth sports to teach kids that mediocrity is something to accept, that we should never strive to improve, and that you never, ever, ever lose in life?
Kids can handle losing. Generations before this one have proven it. I was never a great talent at sports, although I was often decent at baseball/softball. I never won an individual award, and I didn’t deserve to. Sometimes, my team came in fourth – or worse. We didn’t get a generic trophy to signal we were all winners, we got nothing. The next year, we tried twice as hard to win the trophy the good teams got. Here’s hoping the next generation enjoys being raised as a bunch of sore losers, because trust me when I say the time will come when they find out you don’t always win. God help them all.
Today’s Random Links
13-year-old arrested in fatal hit-run of snorkeler
Old school Flash adventure game.. “Cooooool !”
Brilliant But Cancelled has launched
Punk’d by Hockey Dad!