It was a cool spring day on the sidelines of a youth soccer game. My 6 year old son is totally engulfed in a fierce match against, oh I can't even remember who it was. The last quarter is about to begin and one player shouts out to his teammates as they start to take the field, "Hey, what's the score?" The coach, without hesitation or using any of his ever present coaching manuals promptly replies, "The score is Fun to Fun". The number of confused players on the field went from 1 to all in the blink of an eye.  Even the other team looked confused. "What is the score?" a player repeated. My son turned towards his befuddled teammate and said, "We're ahead 3-2".  Satisfied with a more definitive answer, they all ran off to their battle positions, and towards soccer glory! Sort of...

I've never really considered myself to be old school. Maybe because I wasn't old enough. A few years and many teams gone by now, perhaps I have earned the stripes and the years to now be considered a genuine old school coach. I'm seeking this status because for the life of me I cannot remember a single time when a coach of mine A) would not know the score, B) would not care to know the score, and C) ever thought to withhold the score from the team. And that goes across every youth sport I ever played, be it baseball, basketball, soccer, football, whiffle ball in the front yard, or checkers on the porch. The score has always been the score. Fun to Fun? What is that?

I gave my son's coach a quizzical squint of the eyes, and chalked  him into the crazy column. I thought little more about this sporting anomaly on that day. But it wouldn't go away. Instances like this kept coming up. There was a baseball game where the runs scored didn't seem to matter. Neither did the outs! A basketball game where the score wasn't even kept, despite a perfectly functional scoreboard. They kept the time on the scoreboard. Why not the score? Were those extra buttons locked? This went on for many years while watching my son and daughter go through the gamut of coaching experiences. What was going on in youth sports?

I've come to the conclusion that sometime between the late 1980's and mid 1990's an idea took hold that there should be no more losing in youth sports. The thought, like all efforts to protect individuals from themselves, was based on good intentions, but failed to address the real problem. Those pushing this method of teaching are no doubt proponents of the idea that the game is not about winning and losing. True. Sport is about much more than that. But winning and losing are definitely major components of any sport. You can't eliminate a part of a game and still expect the same outcome.

Take cars as an example. No one doubts the usefulness of an automobile. It has value and we want our children to learn to appreciate that value and use it responsibly. But the fact is that a lot of accidents happen involving automobiles. So if we just eliminate the wheels on the cars that should prevent the accidents, right? You bet it will. It also eliminates any lessons that need to be learned. Cars are not cars anymore without the wheels. Sports are not sports anymore without winners and losers.

We're failing our kids if we decide that instead of teaching them how to lose properly, we just won't allow losing to occur. The experiences and lessons learned as a result of winning and losing through sport will happen some day regardless of how much we want to protect our children from anything difficult or emotionally challenging. We are missing a huge opportunity to advance our children through sport by prolonging the lesson of losing with dignity and sportsmanship. As adults, we are sales people that don't always get the sale. Do we quit? No, of course not. We are lawyers that don't win every case? Do we quit? No. We are office clerks that don't get every promotion. And yet we don't quit. Because we were taught as young children to handle 'losing' as an opportunity to improve ourselves. To reflect on what helped our opponent win and come back better prepared next time. We are learners. Which is what makes us winners, not whiners.

It's time to put losing back into youth sports. And it's up to us parents, coaches, and community leaders to take those bold steps and demonstrate once again what it means to compete. It was Mark Twain that said, "Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of it." Our youth organizations, coaches, and parents need to be more courageous. Trust in the human spirit's desire to compete, and in the human psyche's ability to learn. In the future, our children will thank us for our courage and reward us with their own success in life. 

Play on!

Jim Chandless, StarterCoach