Strollerderby

I saw something about this briefly on the news this morning. They conveniently left out the bit about the opposing team, but I believe the coach has been moved to a non-coaching, non-teaching job pending review.

Would you have a different opinion if the Covenant second/third stringers had been put in and they still won by such an incredibly large margin?

As for the feminism argument - it's not about was one group of girls being unfair to another - it's about, do we expect and insist that our girls never soundly wollop anyone while actively encouraging boys to do exactly that.  In other words, were the girls on the losing team treated as more fragile than a similar group of boys would have been.  I'm not sure, but that's where the feminist slant comes in, and I think it's at least worth considering.

Honestly, I do think understand the argument that this victory was overly harsh, but the question becomes, what were they supposed to do?  Call the game?  Forfeit in the middle?  How is it better to say - essentially "we're clearly going to beat you by an embarrassing margin here, so we'll take it easy on you instead".

The object, very strictly speaking, of these games is to score points.  Period.  That's what you do when you go out there.  I think it should be taught that sometimes (or a lot of the time) you lose.  Sometimes you lose big, sometimes you lose by a painfully small margin.  But everyone loses some of the time, and that's okay - you learn from your losses and your experiences and you move on.

I played on a miserably bad junior varsity softball team in high school.  We routinely had our butts kicked by 30 or more homeruns in a game.  There was talk of instituting a "mercy rule" at one point and we - players and our coaches - argued against it.  We didn't want to be pitied - we'd get out there and play our nine innings to the best of our ability and try to have fun and learn from it each and every time.  The coaches taught us that what was important was the effort and that we come away from each game with ideas about how we might improve.  If during the next game we didn't make an error that had plagued us in the past, or we got a few more hits than usual, or we improved in ANY way (including showing more morale and commaraderie on the playing field) then we were highly praised by coaches and school administrators alike.  Did we take crap from some of the other kids at our school?  Yup, but the constant praise and encouragment from all the adults and those kids who weren't obnoxious brats was more than enough to make up for that.  That experience was valuable, even though the only game we won was due to the fact that almost our entire varsity roster had to fill in for a sick JV team during one game.

I agree bluestar.... what were they supposed to do? Just quit in the middle of the game?

I guess when it became obvious the Obama was going to win by a huge margin they should have just stopped tallying votes.

So, if the girls on the losing team need special considerations because of their learning disabilities, why aren't they playing in a different league?

Hmm, I don't know.  For one thing, this wasn't a presidential election or even a professional match, it was kids playing a game.  Furthermore, it was kids at a Christian high school playing a game, where children are presumably sent to learn Christian values as part of the curriculum.  If I were a Christian and sent my child to such a school (at considerable expense), I don't think it would be unreasonable to expect the teachers (coaches included) to behave in a Christian manner.  If I were a parent funding these sporting events, I would be furious to see our school represented in such an unflattering way by the decision of this coach.

Furthermore...well, admittedly, I'm not familiar with high school team sports, but isn't it highly unusual to keep the starting five in for the entire game?  Wouldn't that be highly unusual even in an important game?  That leads me to believe that this coach did so in order to prove a point.  And that point would be... what?  Able-bodied students are able to trounce the less fortunate?  

It doesn't have anything to do with the students winning or even winning by a large margin; as others have pointed out, the point of these games is to win.  The heart of this situation is "what the hell is wrong with this coach?"  A man so small and twisted inside that he (mis)used a high-school team in an attempt to embarrass disabled students has no business coaching children or teaching them values.

Ladies, you must not follow sports too much.  Running up the score is considered a dick move; girls or boys.  Boys teams that leave in the first string to completely crush the other side are, at least where I come from, also called out.  And this rule carried over into Division 1 college too.  

No, you don't quit in the middle. No, you don't let the other team win, but you also don't run up the score.  It's considered bad sportsmanship regardless of gender.

But, I gotta grab the low hanging fruit of sweeping generalizations here.   Not too shocking to see that this happened in Texas.  

Yes, I think it's common decency to change things up -- be it rotating players, trying new plays, etc. Let the teams each play their best, but once it's clearly a win, try testing their talents in new ways.  

In high school I played volleyball, and being the strongest server, I was always first. One time the other team could NOT return my serve. I ended up winning the game being the first server of the game (15-0)! But when it was clear to me that we had this game, I nodded to my coach and I changed things up--tried serving directly to different players on their side (a test of my skill in aiming serves), and in the end I even switched to an underhand serve (which was something I wasn't that good at, but that day gave me some real-game practice with it). I hope the other team appreciated my efforts to give them a chance, and their coach even thanked me afterward. School sports are for fun and to learn, and there's not much to learn by keeping your starters in the game to crush a weaker team. Why not give all the other players a chance?

I still have to disagree (as I do when even professional sports teams are called out for 'running up the score').  I ask again - what's the alternative?  You 'take it easy'?  Miss baskets/goals/touchdowns on purpose?  Don't try for them?  That makes no sense.  Again, I would arguet hat the coach maybe should have given the second/third stringers a chance to play, but if he had done that and they had STILL won by that margin, what then?  

I guess I just can't picture an alternative in my head, I mean seriously, were these girls supposed to not take shots at the basket?  Literally hand the ball to their opponents during every play?  Simply refuse to continue playing the game?  

What happened here can be used as a lesson to teach the losing team to LEARN from mistakes/bad plays/defeat/being the underdog, just as it can be used as a lesson to teach the winners not to gloat when you win - even by a large margin - and how to be sportsmanlike in the sense that you give every game your all and respect your opponents when they do so as well, even if their all wasn't enough to come out on top.

The alternative - somehow throwing or calling off the game or avoiding scoring so as not to 'run up the score' - seems to serve the purpose of teaching kids how to size each other up and decide when your peer is just not as good as you and then treating them as thus by assuming that you'd better knock yourself down a few pegs or they'll a)never be able to beat you and b)never recover from the loss emotionally.

The alternative just seems like a more dangerous - and possibly damaging to self esteem in the long run - choice out there.

Jesus, bluestar, that's tortured logic. Yes, I do think there should've been a "slaughter rule" (yup, that's what it's called) in effect, and the game should've ceased. Believe me, the kids on the losing team would still have LEARNED from their mistakes/bad plays, etc. I've been on a team that lost games due to the slaughter rule, and it was embarrassing, and I learned things, but I was also grateful "the lesson" wasn't dragged out interminably.

There was no need for this to go that far. In an article about this situation that I read at another site, it was stated that the Covenant team was still throwing three-pointers in the fourth quarter of the game. That's inexusable. Why? Because it's low-class - they were just rubbing their victory into the Dallas Academy kids' faces. That's hardly being a gracious winner. Even in major league baseball, if one team is up by a very large margin, they stop having their runners attempt to steal bases. Why? BECAUSE THEY DON'T WANT TO BE DICKS, THAT'S WHY.

Well the coach has been fired for essentially teaching his players to win.  And it also appears that the second string players were allowed to play after all.  But there were only 8 girls on the team.  I think it would have been just as demoralizing for the losing team to know their opponent was somehow letting them score.  If anything, maybe their coach could have forfeited.  Not sure that would have helped things either.

And as for your comment about Rush Limbaugh.  I'd urge you to do a little bit of research instead of just using something you heard or read bits and pieces about. Rush Limbaugh wants Obama's POLICIES to fail because they are on completely different ends of the political spectrum.  If\When George W Bush promoted policies you disagreed with, I'm sure you wanted him to fail at those promotions.  The same goes for Limbaugh and Obama.  Limbaugh has been quoted several times over the last week explaining his comments.  All you would have to do is bother to read them.  But no reason to do actual research.  That's not as much fun.

(I'm sure I'm going to be painted now as some right-wing nut who loves Rush Limbaugh and Oxycontin.  I'll say now that none are true - well except for the right-wing part.  I listen to Rush on occasion - happened to be listening last week when the controversy started - but disagree about as much as I agree with him.  And have never tried Oxycontin.)  :)

I agree that they should have benched the starters. You lost me when you went from "this team needs to learn a lesson about compassion for others" to "competitive sports are the reason that people don't like President Obama."

There is such a thing as trying to do too much in one essay, and this is a perfect example of it...

Jeanne: That may not be what you intended to say, but you started off with an article about a sports team, and ended up with Rush Limbaugh disliking President Obama (or fine, "hoping he would fail"), so that is the message your essay provides.

And this: "people have lost the ability to NOT wish ill will on others."

What does this mean? Everyone is always wishing ill towards everyone? I believe you that you didn't intend for your essay to say sports is why people don't like Obama (even though that is how it sounds), because you don't know how to express yourself clearly in words.

Also, from what I've read Limbaugh didn't wish that President Obama would "fail." He said that he hopes Obama's policies fail - because he disagrees with them. I'm not sure what the problem is - did you hope for success with Bush's policies on abortion?

BettyWu: Actually I do follow sports. You must not know the meaning of "running up the score." Running up the score is when you're blowing out the other team, don't sub in any of your bench players, and continue with aggressive play calling for the express purpose of crushing the other team into the dust.

Responsible coaching is when you do sub in your bench players (which this coach did, despite what Jeanne writes in her essay), and scale back the play calling (he stopped the full court press and changed to a less aggressive defense according to his statement, www.flightbasketball.com/100-0-Texas-Game-Response-From-Coach.html).

Responsible coaching is not quitting in the middle of the game because you're playing a team that isn't as good as you. That's actually called "nonsense."

I'm sorry, I didn't see this earlier and I can't stop myself from responding:

"As for the Obama/McCain argument: A. That wasn't high school sports. B. The margin wasn't nearly as wide as it was in proportion to this game. C. Can we say apples vs. oranges??"

1) Please explain to me the difference between A and C

2) Why did YOU bring up politics if it was so irrelevant to the subject at hand

3) The margin in the election wasn't as wide as in the game? Yes I suppose you're right, the election wasn't won by an INFINITE proportion of votes

Good Lord. Why am I still even on this site. It's like a traffic accident, I just can't pull myself away.

Ashland Ave - As a former HS and College Ball player myself I have also been told by my coach to ONLY shoot 3s. It's harder to hit a three point shot than a simple layup. That is probably why they were still shooting threes. They are simply harder to make.

Duh

"To actually say you hope the president (or his policies) would fail is tantamount to saying you hope the future of the country you live in ends up in the toilet."

This is absolutely not true.  As another person mentioned, you probably wished that Bush's abortion policies would fail.  That is not saying you hope our future ends up in the toilet.  It's saying you think another option is better.  Rush is saying the same thing.  He doesn't want Obama to succeed with the policies that he has laid out.  That doesn't in any way mean that he wants the country to fail.  If Obama tries something and it doesn't work, there are always going to be other options to dig us out.  We have seen this happen with some of the not-so-well-thought-out (to put it nicely) Bush policies.

I don't see why it's so difficult to make the connection between sporting events and politics.  Way too many Americans behave as if the two are exactly the same: they pick their "team" and come hell and high water (which we have now, BTW) they won't deviate from their chosen side.  Even if it means following an idiot like Rush and praying for the failure of our President.  Which would mean the failure of our country and untold suffering for millions, if not billions, but I guess that doesn't matter so long as your side "wins."

It's a pretty sad state of affairs, yet here we are.