Scott Allan's World

As you may have heard by now, in Dallas, the Covenant School recently beat the Dallas Academy 100-0 in girl’s basketball. The Covenant School apologized for the victory and offered to forfeit the game. On www.flightbasketball.com, Covenant Coach Micah Grimes writes,

“I respectfully disagree with the apology, especially the notion that the Covenant School girls basketball team should feel ‘embarrassed’ or ‘ashamed,’ ” part of the post says. “We played the game as it was meant to be played and would not intentionally run up the score on any opponent. Although a wide-margin victory is never evidence of compassion, my girls played with honor and integrity and showed respect to Dallas Academy.
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So if I lose my job over these statements, I will walk away with my integrity.”

And so he has lost his job. Coach Grimes was fired over these comments.

The mainstream media has pointed out that the Dallas Academy which only has 20 girls is a school intended for children with learning disabilities such as ADHD and dyslexia clearly attempting to turn the winning team into a bunch of bullies picking on helpless victims.

Now many athletes I know have ADHD and dyslexia and that is not necessarily a disadvantage in an athletic arena. My son has ADD and functions just fine when it is managed. I don’t really buy that as an excuse for losing. It’s a terrible thing to teach children that they will fail if they have a challenge to overcome.

Now yes the score was embarrassing, but you should be teaching children to try their best whether winning or losing. That where the honor is. Dallas Academy seemed to take their loss in stride with the right perspective. There should be no artificial limit to how many points dictate winning with “dignity”. How many is it? 50? 20? At what point would these girls have felt less embarrassed? Are these girls so fragile that they cannot handle a loss in a basketball game? I doubt it. Losses can build character. If you can’t handle such big losses, then create a mercy rule or don’t play, but don’t tell a team to not play their best.

How do you teach children to win, but not by too much? “Don’t try your best.” “Stop scoring.” And the worst one, “Just let them score a few points” To me that would be even more insulting. Was the Convenant team expected to not score and just play keep away the rest of the game? To me that is more humiliating and taunting than playing the game the right way. Clearly the Dallas Academy does not even belong in the same league as the Covenant School so what are they doing there? If anyone is at fault, it is the Academy’s Athletic Director that should be fired for subjecting their students to a level of competition they were clearly not capable of competing with.

When I was in high school our soccer team would routinely and easily beat another team in our league. One game we won 10-0 which is quite a blowout in soccer. Of course we played our non-starters most of the game but at one point, we even moved our goalie to forward and even he scored a goal. I’m sure watching us laugh hysterically (we were 15 years old after all) and congratulating our goalie score the 10th goal was more humiliating than losing 100-0. You have to admit watching an uncoordinated goalie score a goal is pretty funny. And they could not score on our goalie who had never played the position before. We did not see it as our responsibility to worry about their self-esteem. Over the years they never beat us, but they did improve each year. Were we such better athletes than they were? Probably not. But we had better coaching, were in better shape, played better as a team, and probably had better youth soccer experience. If they wanted to be competitive, they would have to develop a more competitive program or continue to be embarrassed every year.

The reaction of the media and the Covenant School is just another step toward the misguided philosophy of “fairness”. If teams play by the same rules, it’s fair. Winning is fair. Losing happens to everyone and sometimes we get our butts kicked. If you can’t handle losing, don’t play the game. Pretty soon I see a movement where we will refuse to keep score altogether. Competitive games will be banned. Some people would strive to see all games end in a tie. These children are just a few years from the harsh reality of the real world. If they have the spirit of competition ripped out of them, they will be unprepared to compete in life and unprepared to handle embarrassment and failure. It is not a good policy to tell our exceptional children to not achieve their potential because it isn’t fair to those who aren’t as talented. Our country will continue to fall further behind as our children believe everyone should be treated exactly the same. No winners, no losers. Everyone is special and no one is special at the same time. Neither one of those things is actually possible.