Obligatory link to a Scottish haka: http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_WEP9ZkpS4
…classic!
If you fail to intuitively grasp the difference between adult professional athletes playing at the highest level of competition, and 15 year old girls playing as part of their school activities, I’m afraid nobody is going to be able to explain it to you.
That’'s what I figure, but at what point do you move from children playing, where you might want to cut the kids some slack, and athletes competing, where no quarter should be given?
…explain what? Do you think when I was at college we played sport any differently?
I was Captain of a social indoor cricket team: lost the vast majority of games! Never played against a team that let up. Would have hated it if they did.
Played at one of the first paintball nationals: we got hammered by the eventual winners by some amazing score. Wouldn’t have given up that experience for anything: fifteen years later I’m still telling war stories.
And my time in the Strathmore Park Primary B soccer team? Not going to mention it on a public message board!
All I’m asking is there a cultural difference at play here?
The boys’ school where I teach has always had great basketball teams in the three ages categories we have (12y.o. - 14y.o. - seniors), usually winning at least one championship.
Until they reach the final stage (4-6 teams) they routinely kick ass with scores like 73-4 or 62-2. I go to most of the home games, and when they are killing the other school, the coach starts bringing 2nd, 3rd and n-th stringers. I mean even a couple of 6th graders playing 9th-grader teams and still kick ass.
He slows the game and he’s very, very clear against showboating.
I’ve never seen the opposing guys, coaches or familes ever complaining. They knew from the get-go they were goign to lose big. Even more, if they are slowing the game too much, passing and passing to kill the clock, nobody in the opposing side likes it.
The 100-0 coach’s sin was the round number.
(Sory for double posting, am I running up the score?)
Banquet bear, apparently in the US, even in professional sports you can’t win by a large margin.
The laughable reason is that, when you play them again, they are going to be angry and play harder…instead of the logical “they beat us by 40 points last time, let’s not embarass ourselves that much today”.
I might understand in school, but when we’re saying the same of the million-dollar a year player who spent all week saying he was going to eat your family for breakfast, sorry dude, I’m scoring till you cry.
All of this written by a guy who has extensive experience in having his ass handed to him in most sports. No macho bragging, believe me.
Yes, that is what the rest of the world finds wrong with America - excessive humility and good sportsmanship.
My kid plays baseball. In T-ball, when they were little guys, they didn’t even keep score.
In coach-pitch, they had a limit of 5 runs or 3 outs per inning (and it was always 5 runs, those kids could not make the outs, and they were more interested in racing each other to the ball. The whole infield and outfield would be after that ball, but once somebody had it, that play was over.)
When they got to player-pitch, there was still a run limit, only by this time they were getting a lot better at tagging people out. Also, at this point instead of pitching until the ball was hit, they went with the standard three-strikes-and-you’re-out scenario. I think this happened at age 10. I’m not really sure what the limit was, but the coaches would say, “Okay, last batter.” Might still have been five runs.
Oddly, about this point, most of the girls dropped out.
Now he’s on his middle school team–no girls–and they are competitive, but there’s some kind of mercy rule. They only played one team last year that was a real blowout, and I think it’s 8 runs ahead and then that’s the game. I expect that will be gone in high school competition. Seems about right to me.
That they provided somebody with a valuable learning experience?
After all, giving is better than receiving. 
When I was playing softball we had a ten run per inning half rule. I guess that was a mercy rule but I didn’t realize that then. I thought it was just to make sure the game could actually end if one team was a lot better than the other.
I haven’t read the entirety of this thread, but wanted to add that I played volleyball in middle and high school. In 7th-8th grade, we went two years without winning a single match. In fact, I think we scored more than a handful of points in only a couple of them. That’s right, most of the games were shutouts. Was I scarred? Nope, not even a little. In fact, I had a great time, as did my teammates. (And not because we were goofing off- we were actually trying, but many of us had no experience in team sports prior.) Many of us went on to JV and varsity volleyball, where we placed in the final four in districts. Not great, but not so bad either. There was no mercy rule then, and we certainly got our asses handed to us on a weekly basis.
Doesn’t volleyball just go to 15 (or 21?) points then you win? The “mercy” rule is built into the game mechanics it seems.
Yes. As can be seen from the responses so far, “winning big” is generally considered improper in America (and maybe Canada) whereas letting up is an unknown concept to most of the non-American posters.
When I was growing up in England, I was on both ends of 15-0 blowouts in football (soccer). It never occurred to me to ease up when winning, or that the opponents would do so when they were winning. But “when in Rome” prevails - as a kids’ soccer coach in the US I would avoid running up the score - because you don’t do that here.
Even in professional baseball there is a code of honor whereby a team that is well ahead is supposed to stop making certain plays to avoid running up the score. That seems crazy to me. Can these fragile flowers who make millions a year not handle the fact that they got outplayed occasionally?
The goal of youth sports is almost never first and foremost to win. At some developmental point, the goal does in fact become winning.
Neither goal is ever served by scoring as many points as is physically possible.
So, how is scoring as many points as possible not conducive to winning?
I kind of figured someone would play stupid. At least, I hope you’re playing.
Scoring as many points as humanly possible and scoring more than the other team scores are very infrequently the same thing.
There was certainly no contradiction in the game described in the OP.
Oh, so you weren’t just playing. Sorry.
Boy there are a lot of sports stupid people on this board. It also seems like many of those who are for running up the score also describe being ones who suffered huge butt kickings. Perhaps the truism that the loudest mouth on the field belongs to the guy who sucks the most is being upheld here as well.