A group promoting sports activity in Canada says that to inspire children to get involved in sports and maintain that interest, the idea of keeping scores should be stopped.
Richard Way is the project lead for Long-Term Athlete Development, with a movement called Canadian Sport for Life
Mr Way says its “laughable” that tracking a team’s wins or losses builds character in young players.
He says focusing on the final score can actually lead to a drop in the number of children participating, and turning them instead toward sedentary activity like playing computer games. Mr. Way says children are naturally competitive and removing the idea of keeping score won’t change that.
In southern Ontario, the Whity-Iroquois Soccer Club, has about 6,000 young members. Director of Coaching, Mirco Schroff, a former high-level player in his native Germany, says Canadian parents are naturally ingrained with the notion that game competition and winning is important. But he emphasizes that while winning is indeed important, it shouldn’t be emphasized until much later in a young athlete’s soccer development.
Not everyone agrees with this approach however. On an online forum, one poster wrote, “There is no better way to learn how to deal with failure than losing with a team. Children need to learn that they are not always going to win (whether it be sports or real life). What better way to learn about losing than to lose with others.
Another wrote, “Competition is a part of life, so why pretend it’s not. It won’t do kids any good when they go to apply to schools or jobs if they’ve been told all along that everyone’s a winner.
And yet another said, “The message in the world where everyone wins a trophy is that mediocrity is ok.”
Coach Schroff says that in Germany, the focus on winning kicked in later, when players reached the U16 level. “At the stages of 16 years and older, the winning factor became more important and for some players, especially professional-bound players, winning naturally became the only objective. The argument that you need to learn winning—that ‘winning mentality’— is correct, but you can only work on this ability when the player’s mental capacity allows for it Before the age of 16, most players are not quite mature enough to deal with the psychological demands of winning
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