QKid plays recreational baseball. In kindergarten and first grade, we didn’t keep score. Like Mach Tuck recommends, the rules are altered to make the games about learning to play the sport. Each kid on each team bats each inning. Coaches pitch to their own teams. Everyone plays in the field each inning. Games were three innings. Obviously, in those circumstances, counting runs doesn’t make much sense, as you might have a team with nine kids playing against a team with 12 kids. However, the kids did a pretty good job of keeping track amongst themselves of how many outs were recorded each inning and keeping track of who had gotten a great hit or made a good defensive play. There was no official score, but they usually knew how they measured up to the competition.
In 2nd and 3rd grade, we keep score, but everyone plays in the field and everyone is on the batting order. We play 6 innings. Starting in 4th grade, the league divides into a rec track and a travel team track, and I think both tracks follow fairly standard baseball rules.
I’m generally OK with the way things are set up in this league.
One thing to keep in mind is that most little kids aren’t playing soccer or baseball or whatever because of their undying passion for competitive sports. They’re playing because their parents think it’s a good idea for them to learn some basic sports skills and experience being on a team. (Well, that’s why QKid is playing.) Some of that might happen in PE, but there needs to be space for that in rec league teams, too.
You should always keep score. From day 1. There is no real reason not to and several to.
Take if you will, my daughter. She was a bad loser. A very bad loser. If we were playing a game and she was losing, she would just get up and not finish. If she was forced to finish, she would ruin the game for everyone. So, we could just not keep score and everybody wins, right?
No. She needs to learn to be (even if it is fake) a good loser. Otherwise,
No one will want to play with her.
She won’t have any fun when she is losing (a great loss).
So, we kept right on playing games and working with her. Now she can root on the other team or just be happy when someone does something well even if it is not scoring. She still gets cranky sometimes but she has learned a whole lot about winning and losing and how to do so with some class and kindness.
She just turned seven, btw.
I have the sneaking suspicion that if (like her little brother) she was exposed to games and sports at an earlier age where they kept score, the idea of losing would have lost a lot of its heat. But every kid is different I suppose.
I agree with the modified rules Mach Tuck advocated earlier. And during practice, unless it’s a real ‘scrimmage’, there’s no need for scorekeeping at all. I actually am in awe of the posters who have kids’ games where the coach actually yells at them and they all keep score, even if they don’t know what’s going on. Seems like there’s little middle ground.
I think you should keep score around 1st grade or so, but not really emphasize it one way or the other for several years after that. By that age, they’re all counting and know which number is bigger than the other–before they can do that, what meaning does a score even have? And if the kids have no idea what the score means, why bother with it? So the parents can feel like they’re not “pussifying” their kindergartners? What the hell does that even mean, for a kid who’s barely outgrown naps to be or not be a pussy?
Near as I can tell, emphasizing winning as the whole point of the game is great–for the kids who are already good or at least decent. It really blows for the ones who aren’t, though. When the whole point of the game is to win, the kids who aren’t already good can’t further that goal, so they either get benched or shoved out to the outskirts of the game where they won’t do too much damage to the team’s chances. Being treated like a burden does not, for some reason, tend to foster passion and effort in most people, kids included.
That’s not to say that kids shouldn’t be exposed to the concept of winning and losing, and be trained to be gracious either way. But I think emphasizing winning as being important is counterproductive to that goal–it’s the ones who make trying to win the whole point of an activity who tend to be pissiest about losing. (And, ime, gloat the most about winning.) In all honesty, that’s the problem perfectparanoia was having with her daughter–she’d got the idea that because winning is sooooo much better than losing, the game was only fun or worthwhile if you were winning.
My earliest sport experience was being on a Tee Ball team when I was 6. They didn’t keep score.
Even at that age, among my group, the general consensus was “This is bullshit. The point of the game is to score runs. Whoever has the most runs wins.”
We kept score on our own. Got yelled at once by the coach when he caught us writing down runs.
I still think the better way to do it is to do like they did in Little League - if a team is behind by more than X by the Yth inning, the game is over. I don’t think competitiveness is bad, but at the same time it’s probably not helpful to young kids to get completely stomped and humiliated.
At different times, I was both on the stomping and stomped-upon team. Didn’t damage my psyche too bad. Kids understand competition, let them play and keep score. Stop things if it gets embarrassing. I think that’s a reasonable way to do things.
/speaks only for boy sports, maybe it’s different for coed or girl sports. Wouldn’t know.
When it comes to youth sports, it makes me very happy to learn that there are Mach Tucks in the world.
Keeping score is primarily for parents, especially parents who were themselves of middling talent and are attempting to recoup some esteem by having their child deemed relatively superior.
Personally, I think that keeping score and making sure to declare a winner and losers, as well as providing the ensigns of victory selectively, should be done primarily when there is a selection process for participation based on talent. If you’re in a league for a team sport where kids cannot be excluded from participation based on their talent level, then the point of participation really cannot be determining which team is the best. Rec leagues for children typically take all comers, and most of the time the ethic of the league is that everyone gets an equal opportunity to play. Why should you get to feel great because your child’s team beat the team that had to play more gimpy no-talent loser kids? Get your kid onto a travel team, where there is a talent-based selection process and your competition is on the whole going to be more talented, and then you can bask in your second-order, reflected glory.
Having said that, I’d say that taking note of the score even in rec league play is probably okay by 9 or 10. Early in childhood, kids don’t actually care that much about who’s winning and who’s losing. About 7 or 8 or so you start to see a proportion of kids asking coaches from time to time what the score is.
What I continue to marvel at is parents and non-parent adult who have a problem with everyone in a kids’ rec league getting a trophy. You have to seriously ask yourself why you find that problematic. Why does it diminish anyone’s experience if there are not children who go home empty handed? Do you really need another child (again, in a take-all-comers rec league) to be in a one-down position not only by pointing out that they lost, but also making sure that other kids get a physical representation of that fact too?
And I say screw this “life lessons” bullshit. If life and reality aren’t well-suited enough to teach us that the world is an unforgiving crap-fest all by themselves, there’s no need to make sure that our social constructs (like children’s rec league participation) do so. It’s kind of like saying that you should stab your child in the hand with a fork, because at some point or other they’re going to get stabbed with a fork.
I also guarantee you that there is absolutely no way in the world that you accurately recall what you thought and felt and perceived when you were six years old. The sense that you can is an illusion.
Both my kids fence sabre competetively (11 & 8 years old). Not only is score kept, but you find out immediately if you succeeded or failed, every touch. No team to fall back on, just your own performance. Touches are scored electronically, but in the case of both fencers scoring a touch on the same point, it’s the ref’s call who gets it.
They love it, but I’ll admit it’s tough sometimes.
Not at all. I’ve seen recruiting sheets for professional sports. They never say a damn thing about wins and losses. It’s about height, weight, reps, and 40 times. Hell, the only reason they even care what college you went to is to weigh stats and tell you apart from other people with similar names.
They don’t care about records, CERTAINLY at no level lower than High School.
This is true as long as the kids have someone, be it coach or parent, that teaches them how to win and lose with grace.
I have 3 girls that play volleyball. One is a first team all-american in the big ten, one plays division II, and one in highschool. In the early years, they always knew what the score was, and they wanted to win. They were also taught how to win while maintaining the dignity of the opposing team. I believe this led to their ability to accept loss as well.
Its not a kid issue. Its the adults responsibility to guide the process within the rules.
Yes, watching 5th grade volleyball is painful, but the kneejerk reaction of changing the rules is a disservice to any kid that genuinely wants to learn the game and excell. Those kids will just go play club ball where they get actual instruction…and maybe learn to serve.
Really? So why when the day before yesterday when my daughter met with the head coach of a very prestigious east coast university were his first words “So, your team won the state title every year from U9 through U15… very impressive.” If I remember right U9, U10, U11, U12, U13, and U14 are pre High School. The biggest thing that opens doors is winning regionals (champions of 13 states) at U13 (again pre High School).
And being all about Height… my daughter is 5’0", weight… maybe 110, reps… no idea, nobody has ever asked, and 40 time… again, nobody has ever asked. This is a kid who is being actively recruited by at least 10 universities. Short and small, but the top in 4 of the 6 categories (points, goals, assists, shots on goal) they keep stats for as a freshman on the varsity team. But you know what… they don’t care so much what she did on her High school team… it is all about her club play which started at U9.
Um, what? It’s definitely against NCAA rules to be talking to freshmen, let alone traveling to meet with them. You absolutely cannot talk to them, unless you’re on their campus, with your expenses paid by you - which it doesn’t sound like the case. Here’s a link. So either you worded your post very poorly and she’s not a freshmen, or you’d better keep the recruiters at bay till she’s a junior so you don’t see 150k dollars flitting away in your rearview mirror.
Obviously his stats/examples were for football. My sport (in high school) doesn’t even encompass running, so if I had a 40 time, they’d probably be upset I was pounding my knees unnecessarily. Obviously it was to be taken with a grain of salt. FWIW, your daughter sounds more like a gymnast than an elite defender.
Apparently it was very poorly worded, but I’m still not sure how you read into it that the visit was not on their campus and it was not at our expense (it was on their campus, and it was on our dime). No, she is not a freshman, she is a sophomore (last year is when she swept most of the stats categories). She was out most of this HS season with a broken foot… but scored in all of the games she played in and will be awarded her second varsity letter. Not sure either where you think she is a defender, or a gymnast… she is a forward in soccer. Also, I apologize that I misstated that it was a D1 school this week, Johns Hopkins is a D3 school so there is no athletic money, and the coach is able to contact her whenever he wants. Many of the schools she is talking to are D1, and she has the coach’s cell numbers and as long as she calls them they are free to talk to her.
Trust me we are well aware of the NCAA rules on recruitment. When the D1 coaches come to see her at a showcase she (and we as parents) can’t talk to the coach. When we go to their camp on campus we are free to talk as much as we like.
My point though is that coaches are definitely interested in how they have performed prior to and outside of High School.
Sorry, I missed the edit window. Please re-read post #57. I clearly state that she is a sophomore, and that we are travelling there for the meeting. No idea how you thought it was not at our expense. Not so sure it was poorly worded as poorly comprehended.
Perhaps it’s because I quit baseball in 4th grade (not competitive enough), soccer in 2nd grade (again, same thing)… come to think of it, perhaps it’s because I’m not always a team player…
At any rate, I was a wrestler from 3rd grade onward. In a one-on-one sport, there’s no mistaking who won. Every match ends in tears, tantrums, or some similar act of agony. That’s why I loved the sport, and why I quit other sports to pursue it. If I lost, I knew it was because I was beaten mentally or physically. If I won, the “glory” was mine. I’ve always thought those were valuable things to learn at an early age. I’ll never forget a single match that I lost, and will never want to feel it again. And I bring that to bear at work and in my personal life. It’s not all competitiveness - it’s also learning not to be a fuckup.
There was this news story where I’m from for boys soccer in early teens where “parents” pushed to have a rule implemented into the league that basically gave a team an automatic loss if they scored more than 5 goals.
The idiocy of it all was amusing to say the least.