Oregon Youth Leagues: It’s OK to Keep Score
Monday, January 11, 2016
Marcus Mariotta as a young athlete
As a general rule for her indoor soccer league, where they do have an operating scoreboard, if a team is up by 6 goals or more, they pretty much just stop keeping track of goals. And hey, why not even give points to the other team if the leading team keeps scoring? Because, life is fair like that, right? Isn’t that a lesson we want to teach our kids when they join and play sports, that life will always be so charitable when things get rough?
Now, I understand, and completely agree, that sports for kids in kindergarten and up a few years shouldn’t be concerned with score keeping. Development of skills and a basic understanding of the game should be the main focus as much as the importance of just having fun, as sports always should be. But for the U9 leagues, it should be perfectly OK to keep score. Your children will not need therapy if they are blown out during a youth soccer game. In fact, it should be a teaching moment on to how to handle those situations, both from the winning and losing side.
Why do we sign our kids up to play organized sports? To stay fit? Sure. To run off some energy? You bet! So parents can yell at someone else’s kid as long as they are on the other team? Indeed! To teach fairness? Yes and no.
While it’s important to teach kids how to always play fair, teaching our kids that sports is always fair, should not be. Sports, as we all know, is not fair all the time. You get bad calls. You get bad refs. Kids, even at this age, cheat and are sometimes encouraged to by those they look up to. Sometimes, the ball just bounces the wrong way. Sometimes, a team is just better on a given day. At the U9 level, kids are already starting to understand that life isn’t fair. They get in arguments at school. Other kids call them names. They have to do homework on nights they would rather be on their tablets. They get bad grades if the don’t try hard enough. Shouldn’t sports be teaching our kids how to deal with these issues?
One particular article points out that we shouldn’t be keeping score for kids up to age 12. That’s ridiculous. First off, don’t think kids don’t know the score, or at least a good idea of who is winning or losing and by how much. Second, I reject the notion that kids can’t learn basic techniques and skills if we keep score; that somehow keeping score hinders the process of learning good form. Third, any pressure put on kids to win is squarely from the parents or coaches. If we don’t make a big deal out of it, they won’t make a big deal out of it. Learning what it takes to crawl back into a game, knowing how to keep your cool when leading, and not hanging your head too low or too high are all skills that should be taught and preached just as much as the basic fundamentals of dribbling a ball. And here is one other factor to consider: Children are more resilient and head strong than what we give them credit for. It’s the parents who have spearheaded this campaign, not the kids.
Of course, no one wants to see a team of 9-year olds get obliterated on the field by an absurd amount goals or points. But, there are compromises that can be made besides throwing out the scoreboard. Even in adult leagues we have what are called mercy rules, where if a team gets ahead by so many points at a certain time in a match, the game is called early. Nothing wrong with that. Heck, you can even scrimmage afterwards with the leftover time. The coach of a team who is on the winning side of a potential massacre has options as well. Maybe he could get his team to practice more of those fundamentals like passing and execution, rather than going for the throat. Play the kids who don’t get as much time as the others. There are many solutions to the problem of one team being above another without the end result getting out of hand and without ditching the score.
Let’s not forget, sports can be a perfect mirror for life, and because of that it may be the easiest medicine to take for learning how life works. How often are we taught lessons while having fun at the same time? Even if they don’t realize it, through sports we teach our kids how to problem solve, how practice makes us better and how working hard improves confidence. But, all this is moot if we teach them that the final score doesn’t matter. It matters, not because it shows who won or lost, but because it shows how far we have to go or how far we have come. There are few things in life that can show us this as point blank as a scoreboard. So, welcome it.
If you are worried about hurting the feelings of the kids playing, don’t. Worry about the kid who intentionally knocks down another kid and gets a high-five from their parent. Worry about the coach who is teaching their young athletes to play dirty and unfair. Worry, when you kids’ team is up by 20 and they are gloating on the sidelines. But, feel good when you child wins with grace. Feel good when your child loses but you see them laughing and playing afterwards. Perhaps, they can teach us a lesson that we have long forgotten.
The worst moment my daughter had while playing youth soccer was not when her team got beaten down by a better, more efficient team. It’s when she accidentally scored an own goal against her team, an unfortunate deflection of the ball into the very goal she was trying to defend. It broke her heart. It broke our hearts. That goal counted. It was displayed on the scoreboard as bright as any light in the building, as if all the bulbs marking the score shone a little brighter to mark the occasion of such an egregious error. But, it turned out to be a welcoming teaching moment. We talked to her and comforted her. She was back on the field the very next game, more determined than ever to keep that ball away from her goal. While I’m sure she will remember that goal for some time, the lessons she learned from it I hope will last longer.
Why is it, that a scoreboard should be cause for concern? Keeping score is a basic and necessary premise of sports. Without it, kids are just at recess and I’m paying an awful lot of money for my kid to be at recess. I want my daughter to learn what it feels like to get blown out just as much as what it feels like to get a big win. I want my daughter to learn how to be a good sport for when things are going right and for when things are going wrong. If you can teach a child how to be a decent and fair athlete through good times and bad, then you are teaching your child how to be a decent and fair person in life, even when it treats them unfairly. And, maybe more importantly, when life treats them more than fairly.
So, to all the parents out there, it’s OK to keep score. Your child is going through more drama at school than at any time when they are out playing on the field or on the court. Sports is their getaway just as much as it is for those of us who still find the time to play a little recreational ball in between our jobs and family. Keeping tabs on how many points are on the board will not change that. It’s sports, it’s what you’re supposed to do. When they are in high school and college, those blowouts may hurt a lot more, the game may mean something a little bigger. But, maybe it will hurt a little less if we start keeping score now.
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