Competition in Youth Sports

As a coach, my goal is to help young players learn the skills and the character attributes that baseball teaches. This includes learning how to compete--how to play with competitive intensity, how to win graciously, and how to lose with dignity, and then put their losses behind them.

Baseball, our nearly perfect metaphor for life, is all about competition. There is no reason to play it unless we intend to compete. Competition per se is not bad for people. It is good for people. Kids compete instinctively. Leave a bunch of them unsupervised and they will invent some game, some sort of competition.

This week, my son's middle-school team was playing its arch rival in the final home game. It was a seesaw battle, and both teams were playing exceptionally well. It the top of the 5th, my son's coach inexplicably removed most of the best 8th-grade players from the lineup and inserted 7th-grade subs. A tie game rapidly degerated into a rout. Afterward, the entire team was furious, including the 7th graders who had come off the bench. "The coach gave up on us," the players said. They felt betrayed, frustrated, and humiliated--not because they didn't win, but because the coach had taken the game away from them. I suppose that the coach was motivated (perhaps under pressure from parents or the principal) to let everyone play. This, in some people's mind, represents fairness. But the fact is, it cheats the kids who have worked very hard to learn their skills, who have made whatever effort and sacrifices they needed to make in order to succeed.

So yes, as a coach, I want to help my players win. I will do anything I can to help kids acquire the skills they need to compete, but I will not let a child play a position that he or she has not earned. I will not sacrifice a child's welfare in order to win. That means I won't cheat. I won't set a bad example, screaming at players and officials. I won't risk a child's arm, or ask him to play hurt. I won't insist that my players' lives revolve around baseball. And I will try my level best to remember that the game belongs to the players, not to the parents, and not to me.