When we consider any lopsided victory in any sport, we have to consider that there were a lot of factors adding up to the final score. But two factors almost always appear: You have a very talented team against a much overmatched team. Occasionally (on any given day) two fairly equal teams can produce a lopsided mismatch but that is not the norm. So why the huge media outcry over the Dallas Academy vs. Covenant game?
Of course, part of the outcry arises from the fact that Dallas Academy is a school that specializes in working with special needs kids. So the perception one is given is that there is this super team picking on a bunch of weaklings. Somebody kicking the handicapped. There is a little problem with that here.
I am sensitive to those people who have legitimate handicaps or disabilities. I really am. But I don’t like to see disabilities used as an excuse. I don’t think the school is doing that but some in the media sure have. Why do I say this? Because a few days later the boys team from Dallas Academy beat the Covenant Boys team. Are handicaps only applicable to girls?
And why do parents choose to go crazy in either direction? One article had a parent complaining that Covenant was just throwing up 3 point shots. If I was losing that bad, I would WANT them to throw up three pointers…..They’re harder to make. The problem I would have had was when Covenant was putting on a full court press, stealing the ball and making layups. But is it still that bad? At worse, it was poor judgment and poor sportsmanship.
Every young player on a good team at some time or another has one of those hyper team moments where they have everything going their way, usually against a weaker team, and they start thinking “let’s score 100,” or something like that. Nobody thinks that they may be hurting someone else’s feelings. They just want to “turn over the scoreboard,” or something like that. They want to send the message that on this day THEY are the best team. But sometimes that exhuberence gets carried away and trash talk ensues and then things can get out of hand.
Should the Covenant coach “clear the bench” and use all of his players? Absolutely! That is the one part of this that I totally agree with. Knowing that there was an obvious mismatch based on previous records and games, this is that game where everyone should get to play. Should he have been fired for not apologizing? I don’t know. That’s a school policy thing. But I can understand part of where he may be coming from.
In today’s society, we seem to want everything to be equal. We want moderation. And just like James Caan in the original Rollerball, we don’t want superstars. We don’t want people to be real successful because that means someone else must lose. Where did we get this message? How stupid is it to be thinking in such a manner?
Dallas Academy can definitely be proud of their girls for not wanting to quit. That should be proud of the attitude that they’ve instilled in these girls to give the best effort they could even under the bleakest of situations. Actually I’m a little confused by Dallas Academy’s actions. Why, after having said how proud you were of your girls, would you cancel the rest of your league games? What message are you sending there? I can see perhaps canceling the Covenant game because there could be some bad blood between players or parents. But why the rest of the League games? Your girls didn’t quit but now you did.
Sports are just that…competition. There is a time for just playing for fun and there’s a time when you keep score. Having coached at a small school I know how talent levels can fluctuate on a year to year basis. I’ve seen schools be almost unbeatable one year and within a season or two they are the worse team in their league. But so what? Sports is to teach our young players that you do the best you can in every situation. Attitude and Effort are the only things you can control. You didn’t have parents screaming that David shouldn’t have been battling against Goliath did you? Some days you win and some days you lose. The worse score I know of in organized sports was on October 7th, 1916 when Georgia Tech beat Cumberland 222-0. Cumberland’s guys were proud that they strategized a way to keep Tech from scoring 229. These guys even got together 40 years later in sort of a reunion to reminisce about the event. Nobody was crying poor sportsmanship there.
http://gtalumni.org/Publications/magazine/spr98/div11.html
We should be teaching our kids that their value as human beings has nothing to do with the score of a game. It has to do with the effort they put into the game. As soon as we can get back to that basic we’ll quit worrying about what the score is. Would Dallas Academy's girls felt any better if the other team only scored 30 but was playing on their knees? Give your best effort. One day you will be a winner.
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