Mark St. Amant thinks that one youth soccer league’s twist on the mercy role (score too many goals, and you automatically lose) is a sure sign that we’re careening toward Crazyville.
An apocalypse of yet-to-be-determined magnitude is on its way.
The specifics, at present, are unclear. But it’ll very likely include fires, tornadoes, floods, pestilence, locusts—your basic Biblical shit, minus the nuclear holocaust which, I believe, was not part of the Old Testament.
And the root of said apocalypse? Kim Jong-il’s nuclear arsenal-slash-batshit craziness? The fun-lovin’ Osama bin Laden? Deadly rioting after Brett Favre announces that (oops!) he’s not returning to the Vikings after all?
Nope—it’ll be caused by the complete and utter wussification of youth sports. Let me explain…
In sports, the “mercy rule”—also known by the more violent, bloodthirsty, Braveheart battlefield-ish nickname of the “slaughter rule”—has traditionally worked like so: if a team jumps out to a seemingly insurmountable lead, the game/match/contest is ended, giving the dominant team a well-earned win and presumably sparing the losing team any further public humiliation or self-esteem erosion.
But a youth soccer league in Ottawa, Canada, has recently established a mercy-rule-in-reverse-twisted-sideways, and it works like so: if a team jumps out to a lead of five goals or more, that team forfeits. No, you’re not drunk; you read that correctly. Play too well and you automatically lose!
In other words, if a team threatens its sensitive opponents’ nascent, porcelain mouse-fragile self-esteem—even though five goals, while a nice lead, is by no means insurmountable—that team, in the spirit of would-be sportsmanship and “can’t we just all get along” squishy-huggy-joy-joy run amok, is penalized with a loss, thus, like the original mercy rule, also sparing the real losing team any further public humiliation.
Oh, and then there’s this: in 2008, parents in the Youth Baseball League of New Haven, Connecticut, began boycotting games and refusing to allow their kids to play whenever a young pitcher named Jericho Scott took the mound. Why? Because Jericho had the sheer audacity to be—wait for it—too…good…at…pitching!
He threw too hard, they complained. Was too dominant. Too accurate. (Too accurate? Wouldn’t you prefer—and encourage—pitchers in your kid’s baseball league to possess enough control not to drill your son or daughter in the dome?) The league even threatened to disband Jericho’s team and redistribute his teammates to other teams, sort of a prepubescent version of Major League contraction.
And while I can see maybe doing this to, say, the Pittsburgh Pirates, doing so to a Little League team because one kid happens to be succeeding too much is just naked-Gary-Busey-riding-a-unicycle-with-a-meth-smoking-ferret-on-his-shoulders-level crazy.
Especially when you consider this: Poor Jericho was 9.
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Not to play the In-My-Day-We-Walked-To-School-In-the-Snow-Uphill-Wearing-Cardboard-Shoes card, but back in the ‘70’s, there was a kid in my little league named Scott Lodgek. The dude was like 6-foot-9 in sixth grade. He threw absolute gas. And this might just be my mythologizing him over time, but I think he even had a moustache.
Not a bushy Tom Selleck kinda deal, but the other, far worse kind: that unruly, scattershot, Bob Dylan barbed wire-looking mess that says, “I don’t know why God has cursed me with pubic hairs under my nose, but I’m going to take it out on you little shits by drilling your skulls with 96 mile-per-hour cut fastball.
I’d go up to bat, close my eyes, swing through three Rawlings blurs, and go sit back down. Done and done. No tears. No self-worth destruction. Just… the way it was. Lodgek owned me and everyone else. And he deserved to because he worked at his skill, honed it, practiced it, and earned it. No one gave him anything.
But did this occasional emasculation mean that I, or any other kid, who failed miserably started taking their frustration out on neighborhood animals, or grew up to be Ted Bundy? No. (At least not that I know of.)
Did my coaches or parents feel the need to pull Scott aside and whisper “Uh, say there, big fella, maybe you could tone it down a bit, throw underhand, just to make these poor little guys feel better about themselves.” No. We went up there, took three cuts, and sat back down, relieved that he didn’t give us a concussion.
All of which made it that much sweeter the first time I swung and—ping!—took a patented Lodgek heater over the Hunnewell Field fence for a three-run bomb. That’s because after so much failure, success felt… earned.
Does Harvard accept kids with C-minus averages just to make them feel, well, accepted? Do the New England Patriots give massive signing bonuses to guys who catch passes with their faces, not their hands? Does Goldman Sachs accept barely literate, unscrupulous charlatans into its residential mortgage-backed securities department? Okay, bad example on that last one.
But you get the point—real life doesn’t work like Jericho Scott’s baseball league. You shouldn’t be handed something just because you feel you deserve it, or just for showing up.
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I think the reason I’m starting to obsess about this alarming Everybody Gets a Trophy syndrome is that my daughter, Harper, just turned 4. Meaning we’re about to start that phase of her life where nights and weekends are filled with various soccer-swimming-tee ball-esque activities. I just signed her up for Boulder’s “Little Dribblers” soccer program seconds before writing this, in fact, and we’ll soon perform that suburban dad-and-daughter ritual known as shin guard shopping.
And I honestly worry that, when I start coaching, I won’t be able to hide my disdain for this touchy-feely, “certificate of participation”-filled parenting/coaching philosophy that’s spread like so much Ebola these past few years.
That’s not to say that I advocate being another Marv Marinovich, the longtime poster boy for the sports version of the Obsessed Stage Parent. He was a training freak and football svengali who infamously and relentlessly drove his son, Todd, almost from birth to become an NFL quarterback. Marv’s craziness included stringent workouts (in-crib pushups when Todd was one month old), a nutrition program (Todd was forced to bring his own sugar-free/refined flour cake to birthday parties, and balance and agility workouts before he could even walk. For Marv, Todd wasn’t so much a little boy as a gridiron lab rat who missed his entire childhood. But it worked.
Kinda. After a hot start to Todd’s career at USC—he led the Trojans to the Rose Bowl as a freshman—he soon clashed with then head coach Larry Smith and, the following season, …continued on page two Pages: 1 2
About Mark St. Amant
Vocalyze
Okay so you are saying that the fact I have my 14 year-old son (who goes 5’1″, 150 pounds, huge hands, and a 5.1 40) in our backyard for pre-season mini-camp which includes lifting, pull-ups, sprints, and running miles with a tire strapped to his back (not kidding) is a good or bad thing? He has freshman football tryouts at BC High on Saturday and I am projecting him as either a starting Tight End or back-up QB.
This is the kind of stuff I mull over daily trying to raise two boys in a society that seems bent on generating an army of “wussies”. I will never forget the day that my then 4 year old son was told by his soccer coach to stop scoring so many goals and let others have a chance. Mind you my son was the only one running up and down the field dribbling the ball while the others were picking grass or their nose. After tearing the coach a new a-hole I stepped up to bat and started coaching for several years. That is until the day several parents complained to me that I wasn’t playing their child enough. I explained to them that if they didn’t go out on the field and work hard that they would be benched. They said that was too harsh, that this was just for fun and I needed to ease up. Paying for your child to play on a team just for fun? I didn’t get it. If you wanted your kid to have fun then why pay for it when they could go outside and play for fun for free? Needless to say, I only coached one more season after that. I talk about some of these same issues on my blog…maybe we could collaborate one day? Check out my post on raising manly men: http://stumblesthroughparenthood.com/2010/05/31/raising-manly-men/ oh and BTW you might find this article on ABC amusing: Bedtime Story: 1-in-4 Grown Men Travel With a Stuffed Animal http://bit.ly/anDIql
Trophies for everyone presents a real problem when life hands out lemons from time to time. It goes hand in hand with the “everyone’s an A or B student” mentality. Good luck with that.
No, Marv….er, Tom…that seems like exactly the type of training regimen your son needs to grow into those massive hands of his. Why don’t you tie a Caterpillar tractor tire to his waist and make him climb up the side of the house while you’re at it?
Joking aside — and, everyone, this is just my opinion as someone who (A) does NOT have a 14-year-old, (B) failed freshman year Psychology (I partied a weeee bit too much) and (C) hasn’t yet dived headfirst into coaching youth sports on a regular basis (per the piece above, my musings are only my fears of what I EXPECT TO encounter) — I think it’s more than healthy for parents to be involved and push their kids to succeed if it’s an activity in which the kids are interested and WANT to succeed, especially, in your case, Tom, if it’ll help him prepare for tryouts where, presumably, he doesn’t want to embarrass himself in front of his peers. Peers, who, at 14, are perhaps starting to develop a little Lord of the Flies-ish/survival of the fittest view of the world (puberty, girls, voices changing, high school looming, etc.) that conflicts with their X previous years of “everybody gets a trophy” huggy, we’re-all-equals, share-y brain-wiring. In other words, I don’t think the other kids at the BC High tryouts will ease up on your son just to make him feel better about himself because they ALSO don’t want to look any more stupid or awkward than they already might feel on the inside…especially if there are 14-year-old girls watching from the stands or sneaking glances from cheerleader tryouts.
So if you, as a dad, are simply trying to help Seamus prepare as much as possible, and — bonus! — it’s a way of bonding via America’s #1 Father-Son Sport — i.e. football (yes, in my mind, football brings fathers and sons together even more than our alleged “national pastime” of baseball) — then go for it. Just try not to give him salmonella poisoning via a forced training diet of raw eggs.
Again, clearly, I am not a trained child psychologist. Probably a good thing.
Like Marinovich, I’ve read about elite athletes like Tiger Woods and Andre Agassi receiving hand/eye training from their fathers in the crib (!). Like science projects. I’ve also read that Tiger and Andre never felt that they had lived up to their fathers’ expectations. I’m thinking that if Tiger had been allowed to mature naturally — maybe play some basketball, ping pong, skateboard — and he wasn’t introduced to a golf ball until he was 16, he would still be Tiger Woods. Same power, same concentration, same ability, same package. Maybe he’d even have avoided his current personal crisis (I know, off topic — but integrity is something we can teach our kids very early on by modeling).
http://www.janetlansbury.com/2010/02/messing-with-mother-nature-a-dads-personal-post/
Hi. Good article. a few things:
- Don’t worry too much about the everyone-gets-a-trophy thing… it only lasts a few years, and it encourages the little dudes to keep going. As the parent of a now 19-year-old daughter, who played soccer for 15 of those years, I can say that some of the trophies she got when she was little are super important to her now,
- 5 point lead and you forfeit… that’s not cool. Our league rules are: once you get an 8pt lead, they start counting backwards (-1) for each goal. works great.
Best wishes for a long, soccer-filled life! I believe the teamwork, commaraderie and motivation to Push herself, are some of the best experiences my daughter was blessed to receive in her childhood!
- Matt
This is not the kind of article I would expect to find, let alone be featured, on the Good Men Project website. The term “wuss” is systematically used to negate male sensitivity and emotion, and is inherently sexist as it is most often used to demean behavior considered feminine, like crying or being in love. Youth sports are designed to improve children’s physical health, self esteem, and teamwork skills. Kids don’t need any more reminders that life isn’t fair, that some people will be considered “better” than them. Instead they need to be reminded that everyone has different talents in different ways and all are valid and useful, and a good teamwork dynamic would be working together to emphasize everyone’s skills and give all and opportunity to succeed. Kids that have a natural ability at sports will likely not have any issues with self-esteem related to that, whereas those that aren’t so gifted are at a higher risk for self-esteem related problems and I think its awesome that some youth sports programs are addressing that. I would encourage everyone to seriously consider what the real purpose is of youth sports programming and how we can best use it to teach boys a healthy, sensitive, compassionate masculinity.
Sorry Joe, but I disagree. While I agree all kids should have a shot at playing sports, you don’t “dumb down” the level of play to satisfy the less-talented kids. That would be akin to using words with no more than 5 letters in the spelling bee to make the not-so-smart kids feel better about themselves. I think there are sensible things you can do to promote good sportsmanship (such as reducing your score when you exceed the slaughter threshold), but otherwise, sports is like life–not everyone wins!
HUGE shout out to Mark! This is a great piece. I laughed out loud a number of times while reading his piece on the train, to which those around me shot me discerning looks as if to say, “yep we knew he was crazy.”
I’m all for kids enjoying sports and benefiting from all that organized sports offers — teamwork, friendship, skill development, etc., but if I hear one more time that it’s only about having “fun” and not winning I seriously think I’ll lose my nut. When did winning become a negative? No, for all those people gasping in shock at that comment, I’m not talking about winning at all costs, although many people think that way so it can’t be ignored, I’m talking about wanting to go out and play hard, with the goal of being rewarded, read: win! If you play hard and lose, fine, but it you don’t play to win what’s the sense? Soccer is the big game in our family, with my three kids playing on a total of six different teams. Yes, essentially my wife and I are glorified taxi drivers, but I wouldn’t change it for a moment. This also doesn’t include the baseball league one of my guys plays in. At one point we had to leave our town league because they said it was unfair that the kids wanted to work with a trainer to help them better develop their skills. Assbackwards thinking you say? I couldn’t agree more. I can in theory understand the common practice of trying not to run up the score at the expense of one team if another is so clearly better skilled and essentially running away with the game. This, however, seems to be a very U.S. approach, because if you look at European teams for instance they seem to view it a bit differently. With insight from my European colleagues and friends the view is that you are on the field to play hard, demonstrate talent and score. This doesn’t mean making a mockery of another team, but they simply feel that while on the pitch they should play the game to their fullest capacity. Could this be a major reason why the US shamefully lags behind Europe, Latin American and others in the world of soccer. Don’t get me started on that. Best to leave this topic for another post and an even bigger argument!
My wife and I tell our kids that just showing up doesn’t guarantee you playing time on the field. And it certainly doesn’t automatically entitle you to play the position you “like” best. Those things need to be earned. Mark’s points to his daughter about the workplace absolutely apply to sports. Look, all kids should have an opportunity to play sports, and this is why, especially in soccer, there are many different options—intramural leagues, state teams, intertown, etc. Many say that organized sports helps kids be better prepared for life. What we need to make sure is that we’re not doing our kids a huge disservice by stripping out healthy competition and the desire to play hard and dare I say, win, to the point where the experience prepares them not for life, but for a early trip to a shrink.
Mark,
Besides timing and marketing, what is the difference between you and Bill Simmons?
After reading your books long ago, its great to get to read some of your work again.
Start doing regular blog entries and build a following (while writing that next book). Followers will buy it.
Thanks for all the comments, everyone, kind and otherwise. This is exactly what I was hoping to do: get a discussion going about this Youth Sports craziness. I don’t even remotely pretend that I have all the answers here, so it’s great to hear all the points of view. Hey, look at that — I just validated everyone’s opinions! Even the moronic ones!
And by “moronic ones, I mostly mean my own.
Robert, thanks, glad you enjoyed the books. I’d love to have Simmons’ bank account, at least, but not sure whether your comment is a compliment to me or an insult to him. Doubt I’ll have time for regular blogging, but hope to contribute pieces here & elsewhere as much as possible, whenever I can. Thanks for reading.
Here is my take on the “wuss” factor that seems to be missing from the conversation….Parents (adults if you can call them such) I served for a season as “commissioner” of a local T-Ball league in central Ohio some years back.
These are 5-6-7 year old’s that are barely out out of diapers and are gawky to say the least. When I got the records for the last season I discovered:
**All the little girls were stacked to one team
**Coaches could recruit other fathers as assistant coaches to stack all the talent on one or two teams
**score cards showed run spreads of 50-60 runs, sometimes to ZERO by the other team
WELL. I sure as hell stopped this crap…..
**One coach got one assistant coach
**5 & 6 year old’s and the little girls went in a “round-robin selection-equal amounts to all teams.
**NO RUN SCORES WERE KEPT..EVERY BODY GOT A TROPHY
**After ten or more runs between teams, by the end of the third inning, the game was officially over.
Coaches would pitch underhand to give the kids experience batting. Adults who volunteered served as base coaches to teach kids how to slide into base or make the double-play
**Every time a batter came up, the outfield would shuffle to give kids a chance to learn about the position and how best to play it.
You would have thought I was the devil incarnate..I got cursed at, yelled at and threatened by a raft of
parents.at the beginning of the season
SO, I had to deal with CRAZY adults who jeered, screamed at and harassed the younger children to tears. One guy was SO VILE, I called the police to have him forcibly removed.
One father slapped his child on the field for missing an easy grounder (6 year old) I filed charges against him in domestic court and had him banned from being anywhere near his child on a baseball field.
At the end of the season, we had a giant pot-luck. I found an old farmer with a horse-drawn wagon to bring ice cream for all to enjoy. AND ALL THE KIDS GOT TROPHIES (LITTLE ONE)
MORAL OF THE STORY: As far as I was concerned, the kids had a good time. Other more relaxed parents supported the efforts and cheered their kids on. And when the T-Ballers went to “little league”, they were well prepared to play at the top of their level.
AND ME, I was dropped by a majority vote of the coaches to go back to the way things were before….
I went on to serve as an adult leader in THE BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA for thirteen years and helped to raise Doctors, Engineers of all stripe, Computer Scientists, College Professors and the like. Most of whom are married, for many years, having children of their own. And they are all asking me if I will return to to Scouting to watch over their children..
Mark yes Seamus and I were sitting at breakfast this morning before hitting the weights and then timed 40s in the street (we did 7 and I actually beat him twice–which is quite an accomplishment for an old man even though I had a deal with my 5 year old son who was our started that gave me a jump) talking about his need to fill out his frame. I suggested protein shakes. He recalled Rocky’s raw eggs and cringed. We both decided hard work was plenty for now.
On the comments about this article not belonging on the site, I beg to disagree. Our whole point is to exclude no view but talk about important topics impacting men and boys of which this is certainly one. We don’t have the answers only questions and hope for discussion which seems to have broken out abundantly here so thanks for that Mark.
Tom
I’ve taken the offensive and created a competition club in my neighborhood. We are feeling our way around at the moment, but you know my background in men’s workshops and I had a very very full life of rugby, baseball, cricket, baseball, Canadian football all the way to professional and golf. Believe it or not I was a horrible skater so no ice hockey. It took years of therapy to get over that shortfall!!
I have three other men interested and we already have meetings scheduled with local clubs and schools and we are looking to understand how to get the message you speak of out there.
Our first observation is that (no surprise) in most cases this is the parent’s fault. A few parents we contacted were completely appalled we were taking this tact. One immediately contacted a local soccer club to try to preempt us.
Keep in touch as we experiment with how to break this cycle which is starting to creep into Utah, typically in the upper middle class liberalish neighborhoods.
We are struggling with the notion that our intervention (at the kid level) itself will create unnatural unfun experience that in of itself will take the fun out of kids sports. Or we organize deliberately competitive leagues? We are balancing that with simply getting organizers of existing leagues on side and leaving kids out of the formula.
One school organizer thinks we are being competitive Neanderthals and must be spawned from evil tea party organizations.
Yet another political hot button issue.
Gleb
Well done Mark! I couldn’t agree more. I think there has to be more of a balance. We have to teach kids that life is, or should be, a meritocracy. This Canadian mercy rule is literally insane. So now if a kid has an open net, he has to quickly do the math in his head–”wait, if I score, this will be our 5th goal and we’ll lose and we won’t get to go to McDonalds after…” so he shoots the ball wide of the net. This is encouraging incompetence for kids now, and in the future when the Mercy Rule kids grow up and can’t get a job.
That said, I don’t think 5 year-olds should be having endorsement deals. I think the ESPN coverage of the Little League World Series is getting a little too close to the real World Series. And I think the “hockey dad” syndrome where parents are fighting each other, literally, in the stands over the athletic prowess of their kids or fighting with, again literally, the coach for the lack of playing time for their kid is the sad, pathetic opposite end of the spectrum.
Roger, you nailed it. Has to be a balance. But of the two, I find having to do math during the heat of sports “battle” far more offensive than two drunk dads fighting in the stands. Kidding. But seriously, I hate math.
Mark,
Bravo. Loved this column. And it is spot on.
I hate all this “everyone wins” crap. I remember being 6 years old on my first baseball team. No one kept score. Officially that is. All of the kids kept score in their heads though and everyone knew who won. When I got older I played on the all star team every summer from 8-12 years old. And we were pushed. Hard. Too hard at times, but parents would step in when Coach got out of hand and in the end it made me a better player. And taking a trophy just for participation? Those ribbons and trophies ended up in the trash because I hadn’t done anything to earn them. Hell, I threw out some second and third place trophies just because I was pissed.
But the point is instead of raising the level of mediocrity, we should be applauding excellence. But for some godforsaken reason that’s frowned upon these days. My son is only 2 now but I dread the day he gets into youth sports because by then we won’t keep score until high school and there will be a therapist in every dugout. If you strike out you’ll lay down on the bench and tell the counselor how it makes you feel.
This touchy-feely nonsense has to end!!
“…there will be a therapist in every dugout. If you strike out you’ll lay down on the bench and tell the counselor how it makes you feel.”
LOL or ROFL or LMAO, as the kids say, Daddy Files. Well put. If the world hasn’t exploded by then, the frightening scenario above, surely, will be a given.
Let’s see – go down by 5 goals and win the game. My team can win the league by scoring 5 goals on ourselves and none on the other team. Or we go down by 3 goals, pull the defense and goalie because if they score 2 more goals on us we win. They try to play keep away from us and not score a 5th goal on us. How humiliating! I agree that at certain ages and levels participation should be celebrated. At later stages, it is what it is. I have been on teams where we were mercy ruled and I have been on teams where we mercy ruled the others. Play the game for real without a 5 goal rule, don’t be ridiculous. Don’t wussify sports.