I find it hard to believe that the idea of not keeping score has persisted in any meaningful way to today. I thought it was a silly fad that fell by the wayside long ago. I live in one of the most liberal, touchy-feely kinds of places in the country, but I’ve raised two kids in youth sports and the idea of not keeping score was never even discussed. Hell, when they’re five and six you could quiz them after a game and they’d have no idea what the score was or even if they won or lost anyway. They just don’t care at that age, but after that it changes, even in recreational leagues. It’s not like they’re using scoreboards in those leagues anyway.
This baffles me. My youngest just finished her volleyball season on the freshman team and it was serve, dig, set and spike all the way. A couple of kids who had never played before had trouble serving but by the end of the season they were getting most of them in. Half the kids on JV were doing jump serves. If anyone suggested to these girls that they shouldn’t worry about the score or wins and losses they’d mutiny.
Thinking about it, where I live, there’s a decent chance that at least one kid on the opposing team has a parent that was in the Olympics, so maybe this is an outlier. No, the Denver kids are the same way.
As a child I can’t recall ever playing any kind of game without trying to win. Soccer, baseball, chess, or even tag. My first experience with organized sports was soccer and even at six years of age I tried my best to win. The fundamentals of a particular sport include the various skills (dribbling, passing, etc.) needed to play, an understanding of each position in the field, and the rules of the game. Keeping score is part of the rules of every game I ever played.
I don’t think people should be obsessed with score. I certainly don’t support parents who scream and shout angrily at a peewee soccer game. Refusing to keep score seems to be the other extreme though. You’re not fooling anyone. The kids know what the score is.
No kidding there guy. Read my OP. Times have changed. How it was when you or I were kids is not how it is now. That’s the point. No one (at least not me) ever said anything about being good or being star players. I think they should be playing for a reason by this age. A reason other than running around kicking the ball. If that’s what they want to do they can do that for free with kids in the neighborhood and save me the $150 we paid for 10wks of organized soccer.
You have INCREDIBLY low expectations for a 7 year old. These kids could sit in front of a TV for HOURS playing Halo or Lego Batman. Don’t try to convince me they don’t have the mental capacity to understand the score of an hour long game of soccer.
Around here for the younger kids, it’s a 2-tier system for most sports. Generally, the “recreational” leagues are designed to be as fair to everyone as possible - it’s about getting kids into the sport, learning and developing the fundamentals, etc. Scoring and things like penalties (depending on sport) might be done but it’s fairly loose and no one really cares (it’s the rec league, cmon). It’s more like a series of scrimmages, which is reflected in the relatively small number of practices (in my son’s rec soccer league, practices to games are 1:1). Barrier to entry is intentionally very low, it’s meant to foster and develop the sport in the community.
Then there are various types of “travel” leagues for the kids who want to take it up a notch, and actually be seriously competitive. These leagues are less accessible because they cost more and require more commitment from kids and parents. Much more is demanded of the kids. This is less about developing the sport within the community, and much more about developing talent and teamwork within the individual group - and it can be very competitive.
I think this is a great system. And it works well: the travel kids still tend to play in the rec leagues, but when they’re there they have to work on a different set of skills, like sportsmanship, working together with players who aren’t quite at their level, playing leadership roles by helping struggling kids with the basics, that sort of thing. Frequently it’s a great opportunity for even the better kids to develop certain skills they might not otherwise. (One of the better travel kids on my son’s rec soccer team had to play an entire game where he could only shoot on goal with his left foot - which they would never try in a travel league game).
Unfortunately, there are occasional coaches who get over-competitive and basically only ever play their travel kids. But it’s not too common.
I think by Jr High age this distinction pretty much vanishes, with the possible exception of Little League (which has it’s own complexities…).
We can already see it. It’s part of a coddling culture that’s resulting in kids still living in their parents’ houses at 30, having a ridiculous sense of entitlement from being rewarded for nothing all their lives and having no preparation for life away from mommy. Not keeping score is how you create misfit, maladapted nerds who dress up like pandas and have “girlfriends” they only ever talk to on the internet.
I sort of see why it’s important, but I don’t really get why people seem to care so much. Though maybe that’s because I never really got into sports. I only did them in gym class and for me it was just about waiting until the forty five minutes or hour or whatever was up. I can be very competitive about other things, but sports just always passed me by, personally.
If the kid’s just going out there to go out/fart around, does it really matter? Lots of people as adults join clubs or go to the gym just to socialize or enjoy themselves.
Though again, as I said, I was never big on sports and never played team sports and thus never really cared about scoring. Now hand me my panda suit–it’s time for me to sign on AIM and talk to Noriko.
It matters to the other kids who actually like sports. If you don’t want to play, don’t play, but if you are going to play, don’t ask everybody to change the fundamental rules and structure of the activity for you.
It’s like wanting to join a chess club but then asking them to change the rules so that your opponent can’t take your queen or put you in check. Why would they want to do that? They want to play chess, not move pieces around randomly on the board to humor somebody who “doesn’t really get into it.” If you’re not into it, don’t do it, but don’t ruin it for the people who are into it.
They don’t have to play sports to be competitive in either ways (and to learn from losing and failure. The best thing that sports does is teach kids how to learn from failure).
Again we see why PE and organized sports remain in the dark ages. If we taught math this way, we’d go no further than counting on fingers. Although there’s some truth to the old saw of “sports builds character”, the precise type of character is highly variable, and it largely depends on the quality of coaching.
You think the Straight Dope’s fight against ignorance is taking a long time? Try working with PE teachers and coaches. But thankfully, there are a small number of people in the field who are able to think beyond the traditional. Yet, so many teachers, coaches and parents seem to want only a reincarnation of Vince Lombardi. What is it about sports that brings about these ridiculous attitudes?
Anyway…
It’s not about “make every kid feel like a winner” by not keeping score. In my entire career in PE and coaching I never saw that - I’m starting to think it’s an urban myth. It’s about actually teaching skills and using a variety of tools to do so. Game modifications are one of those tools.
There are times to compete.
There are times to build the skills in order to compete later.
When you are 7 years old, it’s mostly the latter. And that means it might be a good idea to focus on process rather than result. For God’s sake, why is this so controversial?
I think that there can be a lat of value in kids playing sport without scoring. It allows them to learn the skills of a sport without the pressure of being result focussed.
For years I coached kids cricket and never emphasized winning at all. It was all about playing the game. Even from an early age I tried to stay out of the on field tactical decisions and encouraged the kids to work out what to do and what needed doing. I only ensured they didn’t break rules. This didn’t lead to any fucking around though, the captain for the day would rip in to any players that were slacking.
Luckily I had good parents who obeyed my spectating rules - cheer for both teams, never criticize any player’s attempts at stuff, no whining about umpire’s decisions, no offering advice during breaks, just generally act like it is a privilege to be watching.
But, even with this kind of attitude, the kids from age 9 wanted to win. For example my method for picking the batting order was, if anyone didn’t bat last week they get to choose their spot first; anyone not out last week, chooses next, then the rest choose. In tough games no-one would choose to bat 3 before our star batter even if he was last to choose for the week. Against weak opponents someone would grab the chance.
I can recall when I was about the same age I started playing various competitive sports and we hated it when the coach made a good player sit on the sidelines to give one of the no-hopers a run. But I recall refereeing kids games and doing an under 8 grand final. As we walked off the field one of the kids said to me, “Who won ref,” and this in a game where only one team scored.
So I guess about 9 it is futile having a no scoring system but prior to that maybe it isn’t so important.
That’s what practice time is for. If you’re at the point where you have actual organized teams and something called a “game” in which one team plays against another, then you keep score. If you just want to “experience” the sport and learn skills, go to practice and don’t play on game day. But don’t be surprised if your teammates think you’re kind of a dick.
This is an absurd exaggeration of what people have been saying. It is actually possible to have a real game of soccer without committing murder.
Mach Tuck, you really need to get off all the PE talk because that’s not at issue here. In PE I don’t care what the kids do as long as they are running around and getting exercise, which is the point of PE. When I am paying for soccer I expect, well, actual soccer to be played within a reasonable expectation of their age appropriate capabilities.
I think this is an issue with things like TKD and Karate too. They don’t really hold any sort of tournaments or anything really anymore for kids in youth martial arts unless you really go looking for them. They just go into class and hop around for a bit, grind out a black belt by 9 years old and go home. My son did TKD for 1 year and every 8 weeks he got a new belt after a ridiculous “test” where you paid $40 for them to get evaluated and get a new belt. I was a yellow belt after like 6 months or so in karate back in the day (80’s) There’s hardly any sparring in youth martial arts (I realize there are exceptions but I’m specifically referring to the huge number of TKD/daycare/playgrounds in stripmalls through suburbia). I did karate as a kid and was losing in tourneys within the first 6 months. If you aren’t training for SOMETHING there is no motivation.
I’m not sure how they would even score a tourny nowadays anyway. No points? No winner? Just good jobs all around?
Sorry, but that’s just contrary to all good teaching methodology. What you propose is akin to teaching swimming by throwing people into the deep end. And while I’m quite sure there will be proponents of that technique coming along any moment now, thankfully it’s largely gone the wayside in teacher preparation. And coaching a sport is a specialized kind of teaching.
Didn’t see this until my previous post. Sorry, but it’s all related. A great deal of youth sports is conducted by PE teachers, and their training as teachers figures into it prominently. As well it should.
You’re absolutely right that there is a difference between a sport and PE class. But in the end, coaching is a type of teaching. All the good coaches I’ve known say that, and make it a point of pride. John Wooden was a great example of that.
I’m not trying to get anyone’s goat here. However, I do believe a lot of people need to recalibrate what they think should happen in youth sports. But go back and read my posts before you get to thinking this is about “making everyone a winner”, because that’s not what I’m selling.
You’re concentrating on the issue of whether score is kept when the problem, according to your own description, is with the COACHES, not the league. If the problem was that people don’t keep score then why are the other teams playing so much better and hustling and trying their best? Clearly the policy of not keeping score isn’t stopping them from being competitive.
I don’t think your kid’s soccer league would hurt anyone by keeping score, but it seems quite clear to me your kid’s team is badly coached as compared to the other teams, and that problem will not go away if someone’s reminding the kids how many goals have been scored. I’ve seen kid’s teams that were coached that way in leagues that did keep score and they played just as listlessly. If the kids don’t care, then they don’t care.