Molding equal zeroes 

By Joseph Kellard 
web posted January 28, 2002

My 11-year-old nephew plays in a basketball league that shuns
scorekeeping. After a recent game, he informed a teammate that
they'd lost.

"What does it matter?" the boy said. 

This nationwide anti-scorekeeping trend in kids' sports is
alarming. Its supporters often rationalize it as follows: "Kids
should just have fun and not care about competition, winning and
losing. They'll get enough of that later in life. And losing makes
them feel bad." Translation: competitiveness and having fun are
incompatible, and competition hurts the loser's feelings.

Yet it's precisely because kids will face competition, victories
and defeats in virtually every aspect of their lives that they should
keep score.

Actually, long before they play sports, kids face all kinds of
competitions. As toddlers, they compete over how much milk
they may drink, as they clutch their bottles while their parents pull
them away. They compete with frostbite, by bundling up to build
a snowman, and with heatstroke, by stripping down to swim in a
pool. When they catch a cold they compete with germs, and,
tragically, some youngsters compete with deadly diseases.

In short, countless competitions permeate our lives. And through
sports, kids can learn how to compete effectively and justly,
accept winning and losing, and have fun.

But where's the justice in pretending that a well-practiced team
didn't win a game when it scored more points than a lazy team?
By keeping games at 0-0, the anti-scorekeepers whitewash such
distinctions to create the illusion and injustice that all teams are
equal...zeroes.

Anti-scorekeepers supposedly want to steer kids from becoming
competitive zealots who try to win at any cost. Any competitive
sprit left unchecked, they believe, will turn them into a person
who misguides and attaches certain emotions to victory and
defeat. The person who, for example, focuses not on playing his
best according to standards within his abilities, but on not losing
so he can look good to others.

In addition to setting reasonable standards for yourself, healthy
competitiveness lies in being self-satisfied by your honest
achievements; thus having no need to rub your competitor's nose
in your victory. In losing, it means accepting the fact that, for at
least that game, your competition is better than you are.

And it's this distinction -- that in certain areas some people are
better than others -- which both the competitive zealots and anti-
scorekeepers find unsettling.

Fundamentally, they both regard it as "unfair" when an individual
who works hard to develop his maximum potential and becomes
a faster runner, a better speller, prettier and smarter than others.

Unable to accept that some people are better than him, the
competitive zealot in defeat envies his competitors, and he lashes
out at them. Unable to accept the same fact, the anti-
scorekeeper in defeat feels hurt, and he stops keeping score as a
way to evade all these facts.

But when they understand that speed, spelling prowess, good-
looks, intelligence or any other reasonable values aren't taken
from themselves or others, only then will they stop their
emotional rants and start keeping score.

Joseph Kellard is a journalist and freelance editorialist living in
New York. He also publishes a cultural-political e-mail
newsletter. To receive information about his writing services and
publication, contact Mr. Kellard by e-mail at:
Jkaxiom3@aol.com.

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