Friday, June 4, 2010

Ottawanians teach poor sportsmanship

Not surprising that this story comes out of Ottawa, however I think that Kelly McParland and Hugh McIntyre put it into the proper perspective.

The fact is that sports are there not to provide everybody with a participant ribbon. They aren't there to teach people to let up if they are winning too easily. They aren't even there to teach good sportsmanship. No.

Sports began as an easy way to teach warrior skills and to practice them. Running, jumping, throwing, grappling, these are all skills that were taught and honed through sports. Further, sport taught the competitive spirit, the fighting spirit, to never give up and never surrender. This is what's missing from this particular soccer league, and why it's arguable that it could be called a sporting league.

There are many other options which could be employed in order to make it more "fair" than to force teams to let up and employ poor sportsmanship. The teams could be reshuffled on a weekly or semi-regular basis. The teams could be seeded to ensure that the teams only compete against other equally strong teams, but in the end, only one thing is for sure:

In any given day, any given game, even the best teams will have a lapse or a bad day. They shouldn't be protected from losing too poorly, the loss should motivate more for the next meeting.

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