On the topic of sporting behaviour

[narcasse]

This post on childfree seems to have stirred up quite a kafuffle over ‘sporting’ behaviour which I personally find a little bizarre. The gist of it is that one American high school basketball team beat another quite dramatically which would usually be cause for celebration but because the losing school team didn’t score at all and were from a school that boasts of its small class sizes and specializes in teaching students struggling with "learning differences," such as short attention spans or dyslexia the winners are now forfeiting their victory.

The argument being made is that the winning team’s conduct was unbecoming because they were so clearly winning and carried on winning, whereas instead they should have stopped somehow. There’s talk in the comments of substituting players from the second or third teams to attempt to balance out matters but, and I may of course be wrong, this flies in the face of everything I’ve ever been taught about schools sports. Maybe it’s different in America and the ethos that everybody has to win prevails but here in the UK the point was to win and win hard. If you walked off the pitch with a massive point difference between you and the losing team you were the victor and that was that. Even in inter-House games the point was to win. It didn’t matter that you might have friends on the other House team you were playing: the point was to pound them into the dirt anyway. In fact you played just that bit harder because half the opposition were your mates who’d tease you mercilessly about a loss in the next day’s classes. The point was to win and there was no reason for you to be on the team if you thought otherwise.

Of course the point the article and following discussion make is that the losing team had ‘learning differences’ as it’s so euphemistically put which could be a sizable handicap in such a game but again the issue isn’t so much the handicap but rather the fact that the school chose to play against a team without a similar handicap. Which suggests to me that they were fully aware of what they were going into. Or that those disabilities weren’t judged to be all that limiting in the context of a basketball game. Either way when the game was set up the potential handicap of one team wasn’t seen to be problem; if it had been then presumably they’d have made other arrangements. Of course I am presuming that the school fielding such a team were fully versed in their limitations due to disabilities because if they weren’t then that’s a whole other kettle of fish and a worse one too.

So if the disabilities of one team weren’t judged to hamper them at all in a match they should have had an equal chance at winning. Which leads me to wonder if it was simply the case, as in all sporting competitions, that the other team played the better game. After which point other parties, not the players themselves, started to kick up a fuss. Because that’s what it looks like. And if that’s the case then it’s a terrible message to be sending to two sets of schoolgirls, namely that on one side they should be ashamed of winning and on the other that they’re not good enough to compete with non-disabled individuals which is why the world has to make allowances for them. And the fault for that, I suspect rests squarely with the adults involved in the situation and not either of the teams.

Comments

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

It is different here, in strange and complex ways. While I haven't read the childfree post, I have seen references to this particular game and its outcome. So I can't speak to what's being said in the comments there, but I can try to explain the general context a little better.

The idea is roughly that (a) yes, a team should play to win; but (b) if a team is so dominant that it's clear there's no way it can lose a game, it is ungentlemanly to run the score up against the other team so dramatically as to rub their noses in their pitiful inadequacy. We see this attitude surface even in the realm of professional sports, where it really is ridiculous; in recent years my local (American) football team has been reviled for 'running up scores' even though anyone who's followed the sport knows that they're not doing it to humiliate other teams.

In this particular instance the situation was exacerbated by the fact that the winning team came from an explicitly Christian school, so that the team's behavior was seen by the school itself as being in conflict with its formal values. Playing against this team would be a matter of charity for all the schools involved -- no one ever expects them to win a game, or even be able to compete in a meaningful way -- so that it looked particularly bad for a Christian school to have broken the unwritten rule about generosity to a team that isn't up to the contest.

[reichsfreiherr.livejournal.com]

I always used to think that being raised Catholic was a terrible way to begin matters but now I can safely say that at least I wasn’t raised as a Catholic in America. This rule of not winning if your opponents are terrible at your chosen sport sounds very, very odd to me. Heck, even Irish Catholic infant and junior schools were all about sniping at your fellow schools and attempting to trump them. You picked at fellow church congregations after all: your choir master was better, your youth group could actually sing, your priest was actually from the south etc.

In many ways this sense of fairness is better but it’s still quite alien to me. Being Catholic is all about looking down your nose at everyone else you consider lesser or so I was taught. That said if the facts stand that this other team had no chance in hell of even being slightly good at what they were doing then the entire setup sounds absolutely appalling from the start and also quite odd, and potentially pointless. Is this sort of affair usual then? To make teams who very evidently can’t compete actually go head to head with actual athletes? Because if it is then it sounds like it’s the system that’s inherently flawed.

[7veilsphaedra.livejournal.com]

Shallow, sloppy reporting makes me itch. When I first watched it on MSNBC, I had all kinds of questions. The reporter didn't bother to do any digging, but just stuck to the inflammatory tale of a crushing loss and the unorthodox, not particularly helpful reaction of the winners.

It isn't usual for teachers to set up their teams for defeat so badly. Occasional losses in order to motivate students are okay, but crushing defeats? No.

Could it be that, in order to secure funds for an athletic program at all--since districts vary on these things--the school was forced to send its unfit athletes into a round-robin style of competition?

This was a story without enough meta.

[reichsfreiherr.livejournal.com]

There definitely does seem to be a good deal missing from the story. And I do wonder if your theory of having to compete to secure funds is correct. If that’s the case it’s terrible but as you say this is definitely a story lacking pertinent information.