Ideology can be a horrible thing. It sinks the brain in a rut, spitting out automatic responses with no regard to critical thought or empirical evidence. This results in a huge resistance to progress. “Change? No! We were right before, so your new option must be wrong! Actually consider the facts and implications? Nope, not interested.”
This sad fact is now rearing its ugly head in the arena of children’s sports, specifically, soccer. The Alberta Soccer Association is proposing to stop keeping score and tracking wins for children under 12. They tried to push this through earlier, but met with too much resistance from parents. Now, they are trying once more and I’m worried that they may fail to persuade the parents yet again.
So why is this being pushed and what are the concerns of parents? Before we look at the real answer, let’s check in with some commercial media. I’ll start with the pinnacle of mindless, reactionary, things-were-better-with-polio zealotry, The Sun.
“Will it result in coddled kids, less equipped to handle the pressures of winning and losing? Probably.
Will the lack of a score promote a culture of mediocrity, where some kids don’t bother to try, and where the best young athletes are dragged down to the level of the lowest denominator? Pretty much.”
Wow, all it needs is to suggest that this new no-score system will lead to socialism or nazism and it’s like we have our own Fox News. But surely, this troglodyte spewing out baseless claims is in the minority. Other mass media personalities will be at least moderately responsible about what comes out of their mouths and actually look into the issue before spouting ill-informed tripe, won’t they? Sure won’t.
Over in radio land, The Bear’s Yukon Jack, the station’s ranter for the everyman, made a Yap entitled “Sports are for Winning” where he posited that the reason behind the no score movement was ‘winning isn’t important’, declared it “nonsense”, then suggested that without winning, kids would have no reason to try or succeed. Of course, no justification was presented for any of this. But then, it’s pretty hard to present what doesn’t exist.
So what’s actually going on? It’s bigger than soccer. Some few articles will mention that this no-scoring for young children is starting in other sports as well. It’s bigger than that too. Sports Canada, the body dedicated to developing federal policies for Canadians to participate and excel in sports, is putting out a massive amount of programs and research dedicated to getting Canadians active for life. They are pushing for all sports to use the Long Term Athlete Development Model . Indeed, some sports have already implemented much of the LTAD model with great success. The mass of research, study, work, and data supporting the LTAD model is staggering. And guess what? Not only is keeping score not important at a young age, it’s harmful.
The load of moronic BS myth is that ‘without winning, children won’t be competitive or motivated to do well’.
LTAD recommends the removal of KEEPING score, not the removal of scoring. People who confuse the two are insulting the intelligence of children. Kids know full well when they kick the ball into the net, hit the ball with the bat, or run all the way to the end zone without being stopped, they’ve achieved. They will feel the rush of success, the thrill of triumph, and the burning desire to do it again. All the motivation, encouragement, and fun one could ask of sports, and no one loses.
In the simpler world of children, losing is failure, losing is being a bad player, losing isn’t fun, losing can be the end of the world. The message ‘you’re a loser’ being pounded into a young mind has disastrous consequences.
The first response to this point is usually something like ‘it builds character and perseverance’. No, for most kids that age, it doesn’t. What it builds is a dislike of sports and aversion to activity. “Why be active and be called a loser when I can play video games? At least video games are fun.” A huge part of the obesity problem we currently face is people are not active enough. Hardly surprising when old school “character building” is teaching kids that sports are for the few elite winners, not for fun.
The other response is ‘kids need to learn about losing, or they’ll be ill prepared for it later’. I can’t help but see claims like this as deliberately dense, as they are wrong on a couple of levels. One, learning to have fun playing sports is crucial to seeing what is really important, which will, ultimately, develop a healthy attitude towards losing when the child gets older. Two, ‘losing’ is ubiquitous in today’s society. It’s a part of almost all games, activities, and all kinds of social engagements. Taking losing out of sports won’t suddenly make ‘losing’ a surprise.
Children need to learn to have fun playing sports, or you end up with a huge chunk of the population who have all kinds of health problems associated with low levels of activity. Once the love of sports is built in, not only will you have a much more active population, training for high level competition is much more likely to happen later in life for a lot more people.
I point this out, not because it’s the way I was raised. Not because I identify with a group that feels this way. Because that’s what mountains of research has shown to be effective.
Just as they didn’t poll parents when they brought in child seat regulations, I feel it is inappropriate to decide whether to go ahead with LTAD based on what parents think. The information is available. Being willfully ignorant of it to the detriment of children is neglectful and borderline abusive. It should not be an option. Not to say that the LTAD model is perfect. There is still lots to work out in terms of ideal implementation. And I definitely am not denying the possibility of improvement, but hashing out these details is not the discussion that’s being had.
Society should always want better for their children. Improvement of this kind demands we move beyond the ‘it-was-good-enough-for-me’ mentality. This would be expedited significantly if media personalities would actually do a bit of research, speak honestly, and not automatically resort to the traditonal-bootlicking, comfortzone-pandering, misinformation-spreading, ignorance-enabling clap trap that currently pollutes our culture.
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20 comments
April 4, 2013 at 7:59 am
VR Kaine
How about this:
In school, fine – no keeping score.
In organized sports, how about proper coaching and parenting to let a kid know what a “loss” really means? If either the coach or the parents can’t get their heads around this, then THEY’RE the ones that need the adjustment to their rules, I think, not the kids.
Organized sports are meant to be competitive first, fun second as opposed to pickup games in the neighborhood or phys Ed class.
I think there are important and positive lessons that can only be learned through resistance and competition (especially with boys) and that requires both timeclocks and scoreboards.
We hand out too many “fat kid trophies” now as it is in my opinion. Kids’ sports are fine and don’t need a bunch of liberal sport-haters trying to mess with it. I can see, understand, and support the move for changing things in school sports but not in organized. Organized sport participation is voluntary and if the kids can’t hack it nor can the parents, they can limit their kids (and the adult sensitivities) to neighborhood pickup games where games can be as “make believe” as kids and their parents want.
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April 4, 2013 at 9:48 am
rww
My most fun as a kid was neighbourhood scrub softball. There was no scoring because there were no teams. Everyone just worked their way up from fielder to batter till they struck out and started again. It really was all about playing the game and having fun.
Of course now there is no neighbourhood pickup game option for any sports because parents are too paranoid to let their kids play outside of organized sports.
Now I’m into mountain biking, which except for races that are a very small party of the sport, also does not involve scoring.
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April 4, 2013 at 10:47 am
ibbica
Kaine: “fat kid trophies”? What do you hope to accomplish by demeaning children who don’t score as many points as other children? I can’t imagine you actually think that insulting them is going to encourage them to be more involved in sports where there are so many people like you involved. Just enjoy picking on people?
Oh but there are “important and positive lessons” can “only be learned through resistance and competition”. Which specific lessons would those happen to be? I’m also very interested in hearing which ones of those are true “especially with boys”. Are they lessons that girls don’t need to learn for some reason? Are boys all just particularly dense?
Frankly, if “the point” of organized sport for children is “competition”, then I for one would say go ahead and do away with them for the kids under 12 we’re talking about here. If, however, the goal of organized sports for children is to let them enjoy playing a sport while learning game rules, then for most of them scorekeeping isn’t going to add anything to that experience. It is more likely to be detrimental; obviously, at the end of the season the vast majority of kids involved are NOT going to be on the “winning” team. If they learn to love sports, they’ll continue to play, to be active and more likely to stay fit. Some of them might go on to play competitively at higher levels, but there’s absolutely no reason to feel like you need to encourage competition in young children. Children don’t need to be taught competition, they compete with each other very well without any outside interference.
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April 4, 2013 at 11:23 am
Mystro
@VR Kaine
How about this? Actually address what I said instead of ignoring it entirely because it doesn’t match your opinion. Your comment is a perfect fleshing out of what I warn against in my first paragraph.
“how about proper coaching”
As I mentioned (and linked to), there is mountains of evidence showing that no scoring at that age IS proper coaching. The LTAD model is designed to keep kids in sports and has proven to be more effective than how it was done in the “good old days”.
“Organized sports are meant to be competitive first”
Riiiight. We shouldn’t care about the children’s long term health and fitness habits. That is all secondary to who is the best 10 year old on field at some arbitrary point in time. Oh wait, no. That doesn’t matter at all. Further, I did point out that this system does not actually reduce competition and that it creates more higher level competition athletes in the long run.
“I think there are important and positive lessons that can only be learned through resistance and competition (especially with boys) and that requires both timeclocks and scoreboards.”
Wow, here you mimic a claim I addressed directly, you provided exactly zero justification for this wild assertion (which I also mentioned was a problem of this position) AND added an extra bit of sexism to top it all off. That’s an impressive number of ways to be wrong.
“We hand out too many “fat kid trophies” now as it is in my opinion. ”
This is that negative stigma for “losing” that we need to get away from for young children. This was also mentioned in the article, along with how ‘your opinion’ means squat when it goes against empirical evidence.
“Kids’ sports are fine and don’t need a bunch of liberal sport-haters trying to mess with it.”
Liberal sport-haters? What the hell are you talking about? As mentioned, this is being spear-headed by Sports Canada, an organization dedicated to the growth and excellence of sports in Canada. And I don’t see how ‘mountains of evidence says this works’ equates to ‘liberal’, or how it’s negative in any way.
Just about every sentence of your baseless ramblings was addressed in the original article. I don’t mind discussion, but actually read what is written. If you respond to the content, your comments are less likely come off as thick-headed, irrelevant babbling.
@rww
Thanks for commenting and happy cycling! It is indeed sad that there seems to be less spontaneous sporting going on.
@ibbica
Thanks for commenting. Any help putting mindless ‘old ways = best ways’ thinking in its place is appreciated.
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April 4, 2013 at 4:15 pm
Alan Scott
I believe not keeping score will only cause these kids to find some other sport . Even in pick up games you keep score .
There are better ways to handle the over competitiveness that can creep into youth soccer . The parents and coaches egos are sometimes the bigger problem . I’ve been guilty on both accounts .
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April 4, 2013 at 4:45 pm
Mystro
@ Alan Scott
“I believe not keeping score will only cause these kids to find some other sport .”
As I mentioned, the LTAD model is being applied to all sports. Interestingly, another aim of the LTAD is to get the focus of coaches off of keeping kids in their particular sport. If children learn that being active is fun, it doesn’t matter what sport they play. The end result is way more kids playing sports, and playing sports that they enjoy.
I’m wondering at your ‘better ways’ and if you have anything to back them up?
“The parents and coaches egos are sometimes the bigger problem”
Agreed. Indeed, I believe that most of the resistance I get on this issue is a direct result of those egos.
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April 4, 2013 at 5:15 pm
rww
I think this whole obsession with points is why the rich try so hard to keep acquiring wealth at the expense of the poor even after they have more money than they could ever use constructively, Dollars are points and whoever has the most points when they die wins and winning is everything.
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April 4, 2013 at 7:41 pm
VR Kaine
Mystro,
You win! :) I concede that upon further reading my position on this has changed.
As I mentioned (and linked to), there is mountains of evidence showing that no scoring at that age IS proper coaching.
Not keeping score has to do with refereeing/officiating and not so much “coaching”, but regardless there is a bigger picture here that I admit I failed to recognize.
I find this article from the site you posted to be the most compelling so far:
http://canadiansportforlife.ca/fr/node/1203
Organizationally, I now support the move. Personally, however, my concern remains for the kids I know in sports who actually excel now and are gaining a lot (I believe) from the competition. My initial reaction was that the leagues these kids were in or the coaching they would get would be “watered down” and that they’d lose out in the long run, similar to a post by this Canadian blogger:
“The Issues surrounding the evidence base of the model are simple; during the development of the model no scientific/empirical studies were conducted to establish whether expert athletes actually develop via the four key stages proposed in LTAD. Indeed the only research conducted so far regarding how experts develop reveals different activities and stages to those proposed in LTAD (see Williams 2009). As it stands the evidence base for the model constitutes the basic elements of the Canadian Men’s Alpine Ski team program spanning three Olympic cycles.”
(A, M, Williams & P.R Ford (2009) Promoting a skill based agenda in Olympic sports: The role of skill acquisition specialists, Journal of Sports Sciences, 27: 13, 1381 – 1392)
That said, however, LTAD proponents seem to quickly and easily recognize the need for better coaching and respect for the upper echelons of talent for the game:
(http://www.collingwoodusc.ca/index.php/en/about-us/92-cusc-articles/138-dispelling-the-myth-around-no-scores-no-standings) “Many will argue that the way to improve the game for players below the age of 12 is to improve the standard of coaching. You will get no argument from me on this. In fact, I believe that the CSA should do whatever it can to remove barriers to coach education, including finding a way to pick up the tab for the costs of coach education courses. However, coach education is only one component of improving the game in Canada. We need a complete shift in our mentality towards the game at the grassroots level”
My knee-jerk reaction was that removing the “keeping of scoring” was simply a spin on the “no more medals” wussification of sports agenda. In what I’ve read, however, I haven’t seen a single qualified LTAD promoter saying anything of the sort – even when certain leagues are in fact trying to go ahead with a “no more medals” model (http://www.ottawasun.com/2011/10/23/dont-celebrate-winning-corbett). Consequently, my position has changed.
Thanks for the eye-opener my friend! :)
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April 4, 2013 at 7:59 pm
Alan Scott
Mystro,
Better ways are just monitoring what the coaches are doing and also trying as much as possible to keep parity among teams . Children at all levels are naturally competitive. In the game you want the kids to go all out and keeping score is how you do it . Once the game is over, it’s over . You teach the kids, it is only a game . You teach them to win and lose . They really can handle it . The parents are a different matter .Teaching them is hard .
I was involved and I had to learn to control my temper when the coach was stupid and the ref was blind . Coaching and reffing cured me .
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April 4, 2013 at 9:22 pm
ibbica
@Alan Scott: “Children at all levels are naturally competitive. In the game you want the kids to go all out and keeping score is how you do it .”
Er… yeah, kids are ‘naturally’ competitive. Doesn’t that mean that they do NOT need some grown-up “keeping score” for them, or to encourage them to be more competitive? Don’t worry, they’ll do just fine at competing among themselves, thanks very much, regardless of what any ‘officials’ have to say about it. Meanwhile, pointedly NOT keeping score might just help keep some of the parents’ attitudes in check (although again, there’s nothing stopping parents from individually keeping score on their own if that’s the way they want to “encourage” their child). And hey, it might just help encourage the kids who really do enjoy being active but who don’t ‘naturally’ enjoy the overly competitive nature of team sports. Unfortunately, schools and communities don’t typically funnel much funding or many resources into supplying equipment – and especially the supervision required – for children interested in many ‘solo’ sports that tend to emphasize besting your own previous accomplishments over besting other players (yes, I am aware of pro golfers, archers, rowers, runners, etc., but nearly all children under 12 qualify as “far from the professional level” for ANY sport). Too many children are discouraged from activity by essentially being required to compete with others who are inherently more talented. If the goal is to keep children active and interested in sport, then either we should change team sports (where a few adults can supervise a group of children) so that they are more inclusive and place less emphasis on competition, or we should start funneling more resources into the additional supervision required for solo sports for those children who prefer that approach.
@Mystro: no problem ;) I’ve been reading for a while, but rarely venture into the comments sections. But very occasionally something just gets stuck in my craw…
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April 5, 2013 at 8:12 am
The Arbourist
@Alan Scott
Haven’t seen you in a while Mr.Scott. Welcome back, such as it is. Anyhow, it is hard sometimes to to accurately say all things of any class are “x”. Many of the students I work with are not competitive at all and prefer cooperative games and activities, for instance.
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April 5, 2013 at 8:14 am
The Arbourist
@rww
Hey, thanks for stopping by. I’m curious RRW, do you think it is a function of our “competitive nature” or a by-product of the consumerist society with inhabit?
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April 5, 2013 at 10:05 am
VR Kaine
To the accusation of being “sexist” before (my comment about boys benefitting from competition), I found this on the web here: http://rady.ucsd.edu/faculty/directory/gneezy/pub/docs/gender.pdf
The results confirm the initial conjecture: competition enhances the performance of males, but not females.
A large body of literature in evolutionary biology and sociobiology documents differences in competitiveness between males and
females in many species (see Jonathan Knight, 2002). This literature argues that the differences in competitiveness are due to differences in the cost of reproduction: for males, the cost of participating in the reproductive process is very low, and so they will attempt to mate with many partners, and they will compete with other males in order to do so. Females, on the other hand, endure a much higher cost in parental investment and so are inherently much more choosy, rather than competitive.”
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April 5, 2013 at 12:45 pm
ibbica
@Kaine, yes it is sexist to suggest treating members of one gender differently from the other, regardless of their individual proclivities. It is sexist to assume that any individual child will benefit from a certain approach more or less than another child, based solely on their (assigned) gender. Any assumptions that the observed sex difference (in a particular subpopulation immersed in a particular cultural background) in response to competition is (a) innate and (b) desirable to encourage would also be sexist (not to mention baseless, based on that study).
As for the evopsychobabble the once again rears its ugly head… please don’t forget that we’re talking about children under twelve years old, here. The authors of that study you cited overreach greatly.
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April 5, 2013 at 7:17 pm
VR Kaine
@ibbica,
Is that the academic version of the word without the negative connotations, or it simply an evil word? The chemical and physiological differences of male and female brains appears very well documented, so from that it would make sense that anyone effective at teaching, coaching, counselling, or any sort of leading whatsoever would be aware and respectful of those differences.
In my field, there’s Dr. Sondra Thiederman who conducted studies where she compared the behaviors of boys in playschool with men in corporate boardrooms and did the same with girls and women. The behaviors were distinct between the genders and similar across the age gaps, which would suggest to me that there’s more research supporting that male and female “brains” (energies, personas, whatever) are distinctly different. That’s just one source and I wouldn’t be surprised that within any sort of diversity practice one would find similar conclusions.
On that basis alone (among others) I would disagree with you that what works for boys from a communicating/leading/coaching standpoint would be automatically just as effective for girls, especially when you get into leadership, tactics, and strategy. If that’s somehow “sexist” in the derogatory sense of the word, then so be it – I’ll take the “sexists” results over those who think we’re all just a bunch of “Its” anyday. :).
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April 5, 2013 at 8:08 pm
ibbica
@Kaine
Are there differences between male and female brains, on average? YES. As a matter of fact, I’ve personally made a career in large part studying those biological and behavioural differences! I think they’re fascinating, and strive to understand the function of those differences in a variety of species, including humans.
Does that mean we should therefore automatically treat any individual as representative members of their gender? NO.Absolutely, positively, without reservations NOT. That’s where you and many others manage to go wrong: in concluding that “women” and “men”, “boys” and “girls” are all somehow to be treated as though they were representative of the mean of the group to which they’ve been assigned. Even treating “most” individuals as representative members of their gender is a gross oversimplification and a horrid falsehood that should be actively and pointedly condemned.
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April 5, 2013 at 8:32 pm
Alan Scott
The Arbourist ,
The most welcome I’ve felt in many a day, thank you .
I will agree with one point about wins and losses, and that is in tournaments . Pressure to win in the lower age groups is not always healthy . I remember that what the kids valued most was just being on the field and playing.
That was harder than it sounds because frequently the team numbers could be very large . Doling out equitable playing time could be tough .
I’m curious as to what cooperative activities and games you use . You may be dealing with a different cross section of kids than those who sign up for organized sports teams .
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April 6, 2013 at 9:11 am
VR Kaine
“Does that mean we should therefore automatically treat any individual as representative members of their gender? NO.Absolutely, positively, without reservations NOT. That’s where you and many others manage to go wrong: in concluding that “women” and “men”, “boys” and “girls” are all somehow to be treated as though they were representative of the mean of the group to which they’ve been assigned. Even treating “most” individuals as representative members of their gender is a gross oversimplification and a horrid falsehood that should be actively and pointedly condemned.”
I put “energy”, “persona” and such in brackets for a reason, one being that I don’t just put people into a category based upon gender. In my comment I used men, women, girls, and boys as descriptors for the sake of brevity rather than some lengthy subdescription that would have taken the conversation into the weeds.
I work in corporate training and culture, and have never practiced or believed that a group of 30 men in a room are “men” or that 30 women are “women”. To me that ignores very important nuances between people as individuals which is one reason why I like Thiederman’s work – she doesn’t ignore these nuances.
Are there differences between male and female brains, on average? YES. As a matter of fact, I’ve personally made a career in large part studying those biological and behavioural differences! I think they’re fascinating, and strive to understand the function of those differences in a variety of species, including humans.
I find it fascinating as well and think it’s great that you’ve made a career of it. I’d be interested in learning more about what you’ve studied/concluded. For me, “Change Management” is the flavor of the month in companies right now, and in my opinion the content is grossly outdated and far too generic to be efficient and effective. Companies are simply “re-arranging assets” rather than truly changing, which is why after decades of supposedly effective models being tested and “proven” we still have books like Sandberg’s “Lean In” needing to be written and Drucker’s opinions on Corporate Citizenry being considered progressive rather than the norm.
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April 6, 2013 at 11:45 am
The Arbourist
@Alan Scott
The youth I work with are often from tenuous family situations and are not socialized very well. Competitive games/sports can create a lot of anxiety for these kids which tends to trigger many of the negative coping strategies they have adopted to survive in their lives.
“Skittles” would be a good example of a game with competitive component, but not necessarily a competitive game. You have 5 orange road pylons and each of these is defended by a student. The goal is to knock your opponents pylon over with a ball. If your pylon is knocked over, then the extra people waiting take-over defense of said pylon and the person then goes to the back of the queue waiting to get back into the game.
So, there are some quasi-competitive aspects, but the goal is to get the kids moving and interacting withing a set of agreed upon rules.
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April 7, 2013 at 12:48 pm
Alan Scott
The Arbourist,
That sounds like a good game. My all time favorite game in the low competitive genre is dodge ball. While there is a possibility of injury if a ball hits the head, it is not that common. No other game, I’ve seen, brings kids of different personalities out of their shells like dodge ball.
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