100 to Zip! Isn’t the Lesson Obvious?

In her recent (1/24/2009) Dallas Morning News column, Jacquielynn Floyd asked us to show Covenant’s coach and players the mercy that they didn’t show in rolling up the score against Dallas Academy. Her point is well-taken. It is all too easy to point the finger at flagrant violations of sportsmanship and decency. Covent took a far worse hit than Dallas Academy; there is no justification to keep piling on the blame.

We should, however, be cautious in accepting Ms. Flynn’s depiction of what went wrong: “Well, we all get the point. The Covenant team’s greedy rout was childish and unsportsmanlike.” The rout may have been greedy, but it wasn’t “childish.” Running up the score for the sake of a record book is a distinctly adult vice; and it symptomatic of what goes wrong every day in organized sports. Children don’t compete to produce a headline, they compete to have fun. Left to their own devices, children won’t run up the score because running up the score has nothing to do with the fun of competing. Sports are meant to be play, but adults who don’t take the time to reflect on what children’s games are all about transform play into conquest. The failure to reflect on the purpose of youth and high school sports is endemic.

Let’s not point the finger at Covenant or Covenant’s coach (who was eventually fired after publically protesting his innocence) but at school administrators and leaders of athletic associations across the country who have abdicated responsibility for the conduct of their coaches and the values that sports are meant to uphold. Let’s acknowledge that the Covenant incident could happen only in a culture that puts winning before everything. Covenant administrators did not apologize until over a week after the incident had made the news. At that time, Covenant’s coach seemed puzzled by all the fuss: “It was unfortunate … it just happened.” Covenant’s administrators and coaches aren’t cruel or insensitive people; they are products of their culture. But that’s just the problem. Incidents like this keep happening every day in almost every league, usually not so blatantly and seldom so publically. They are going to keep happening until principals, parents, and sports administrators say “enough!” and commit themselves to work with their coaches in putting athletes first in their sports programs.

-Dr. Clark Power