6 Votes
Sportsmanship in High School
The Dallas Morning News is reporting a story of a high school girls basketball team, Covenant, that recently beat another team 100-0. As a result, the coach of the winning team was fired.
Some statements from Covenant’s website regarding the game:
“The Covenant School, its board and administrators, regrets the incident of January 13 and the outcome of the game with the Dallas Academy Varsity Girls Basketball team. It is shameful and an embarrassment that this happened. This clearly does not reflect a Christ-like and honorable approach to competition.”
“Covenant school officials have met with and personally apologized to Dallas Academy Headmaster Jim Richardson and Athletic Director Jeremy Civello and wish to extend their highest praise to each member of the Dallas Academy Varsity Girls Basketball team for their strength, composure and fortitude in a game in which they clearly emerged the winner.”
So, some questions for Nerdland: Does the coach deserve to be fired for winning? Do the Covenant players deserve to forfeit that game (which Covenant has submitted a request to do) as well as have the losing team be called the “clear winners” on their own website? What does this say about the state of sports in our society? When is it OK to win by a lot and when isn’t it?
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Christ would have dunked by markmcb
This clearly does not reflect a Christ-like and honorable approach to competition.
Last I checked Christ was all about winning, i.e., play the game right and win as big as you can or spend your life in the eternal losers’ box.
But hey, we live in the land of the quick fix, right? I mean if you can’t take a pill or blame someone else to make something better, you’re probably not in America. I’m not surprised they fired the coach. So much for displaying strength and composure in the midst of immense pressure.
Private School Courage? by wayne.r.keeler
My biggest beef with this whole scenario is that the Covenant school didn’t take the “overcome defeat” path over the “overcome oppression” path. This is a scenario of “assuming the victum.” WHO is cool with teaching this behavior? Profound defeat in sports is a humility building exercise.
In actuality, I blame the faculty and parents who promote this school (by likely paying exhorbinant tuition fees), for not having the creativity to turn defeat into an inspirational baseline to build a triumphant recovery scenario to teach. Modern parents really do, in many cases, lack the personal courage to allow thier children to endure the hurt and pain of loss. “It hurts them more than it hurts the kids!” Listen we are adults, parents… the reason we are in this world is to teach children the realities of loss and pain; triumph and victory. Intrinsic to this responsibility is that me may endure a broken heart or two along the way. In this regard this is a sort of “selfless service” that all parents must bear in the name of their children.
This goes along with and is tantimont to the spanking and discipline argument. A fair dose of disappointment and pain, remidied by a spoonful and a half of encouragement and redemption, is a traditionally successful recipe for a healthy kid. Too many parents want to “immunize” their kids from the realities of life. This creates the sterile, nuturing environment that protects them from pain and disappointment and promotes the theory that this is somehow a better environment in which to learn and grow. Unfortunately and too often, the product is a child or young adult who does not possess the immunities or resistance to the harsh realities of life required to cope, function, or flourish. Am I the only one who ever wonders why, in a world of such advanced medical and sociological sophistication, we have an ever increasing number of weak, troubled children.
This is a product, in my opinion, of a lot of uncourageous parenting by folks who aren’t willing to tell their kids to “…get up and stop crying” when they get a boo boo. “I mean, ‘ouch’ that fall hurt me too…but you’ll be ok…”; “No we are not done trying to ride this bike, we will work at it until we get it…” etc. It takes a brave parent to watch their kids cry. My guess is that the parents at Covenent were no more prepared to help their children prevail over the disappointment of losing at sports than they were to allow their children to prevail over the challenges of public school. (Ouch, sorry home-schoolers and bully-paraniod parents…)
sportsmanship by Anonymous
1. The coach should not have been fired. The school could have cared less about that game…until it became a front page story. Then, they suddenly had remorse for their winning is everything mentality.
2. The Covenant girls do not deserve the forfeit. They were doing what they were taught to do by their parents, their school and their coach.
3. The story tells me that youth sports are totally out of control. Let the kids play and have fun and quit pretending like every game is The Final Four. Our obssession with winning and being the best is stupid. Why can’t we play for the joy of playing like the Dallas Academy girls were doing?
4. It’s o.k. to win by a lot when you are playing an evenly matched team.