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By BEN MCCARTY
News staff writer
August 30, 2008
In
the movie “The Mighty Ducks,” coach Gordon Bombay takes a long
journey about what really matters in sports and then his misfit
hockey team squares off against their arch-rivals, the Hawks,
led by Bombay’s hardcore former coach Jack Reilly.
Reilly’s motto for his team, repeated throughout the movie, is,
“It’s not worth winning if you can’t win big.”
The Hawks will do anything to win, including taking the Ducks
best player out of the game. Along the way Bombay learns that
coaching his youth team is not about the winning, but about the
experience of teaching his kids to love the game and care about
each other.
Naturally, as these kinds of movies go, the Ducks upset the
Hawks in the big game and the credits roll to “We are the
champions.”
Now, every ragtag youth team is not going to rally together to
beat its better-funded, elite opponent, but when did we
seemingly stop being a nation of Gordon Bombays and become one
of Jack Reillys?
A T-ball team in Florida was recently stripped of its district
tournament championship trophy for allegedly using two players
who were not on the postseason roster to fill in for a pair of
sick kids.
Until reading this story I was not even aware that there was
such a thing as T-ball championship tournaments. I was not even
aware that people actually kept score in T-ball. Nor did I know
actual rosters, beyond a phone list to let parents know who was
supposed to bring snacks to the next game, were kept in T-Ball.
A T-Ball championship tournament?!?! Really!?!?! Why!?
Then last week came news that a 9-year-old pitcher was banned
from a baseball league in New York. Apparently he was too good a
pitcher, and 9-year-old children complained to the league’s
authorities that their self-esteem could not handle the crushing
blow of striking out against the kid. Oh wait — the kids didn’t
complain; their parents did.
And as usually happens when parents get involved to a ridiculous
level in youth sports, the situation now involves police and
lawsuits.
Would there be any harm in suggesting to the boy’s parents that
maybe he would be better suited for a more advanced league?
Perhaps he wants to stay and play with his friends? But banning
him from pitching because he is supposedly too good?
Safety concerns were cited as the reason for banning the young
Nolan Ryan, but then it was revealed that two teams contending
for the league championships had invited him to join their team,
and he decided to join a different team instead.
Really, “safety concerns” was the best poor-loser excuse they
could come up with?
Maybe I’m just old-fashioned, but isn’t the point of sports at a
young age to teach youth the skills of the game, not to squabble
over who gets the best players or who gets the big plastic
trophy in T-ball?
Thankfully I have yet to see any of the types of these behaviors
by either youth coaches and parents in the Gorge, and I hope I
never have to.
Maybe the folks who get all the negative attention are just bad
apples, or maybe, this kind of behavior is bceoming a trend. I
am afraid if it is the latter.
With the fall youth sports season just around the corner, it’s
important to remember that it is not the winning or losing that
it is important, it’s how youngsters are taught to play the game
that counts.
Gordon Bombay and his Ducks vanished for good after 1996’s
“Mighty Ducks 3,” but if we want to get youth sports in this
country on the right track, we need more Gordon Bombays and
fewer Jack Reillys.
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