Posted on 06/03/2010 5:54:32 AM PDT by mattstat
Ottawa has a new rule on the books for kids playing league soccer. Any team that goes ahead by more than five goals loses.
Yes, dear reader, your eyes do not deceive you. Parents who used to shout “You can do it!” will now be required to yell, “Equality! Equality!”
Kidding! I’m kidding—but only about the cheering. Ottawa club director Sean Cale said “the league’s 12-person board of directors is not trying to take the fun out of the game, they are simply trying to make it fair.”
How could this have happened? Well, Ottawa is the home of Canada’s capitol, and therefore has the highest per-capita density of bureaucrats in the country. Plus, the rule change is a necessary consequence of the obsession with equality.
Now, in baseball—in real baseball, not Ottawa’s no doubt upcoming re-imagining of the game—everybody knows that you should not stand at the plate like an egomaniac admiring the flight of your ball. You must not saunter towards first or stall along the way just because you hit a home run. You must run it out.
Why? Running it out shows respect. But if you grandstand, you’re likely to be beaned by the pitcher on your next at bat. This is only right and proper.
Everybody also knows that you must not steal when your team has a big lead and it’s late in the game...
(Excerpt) Read more at wmbriggs.com ...
SHEESH!!!
Down by four? Kick the ball in your own net and win.
Political Correctness Goes Wild
Sadly, it’s looking like Canada today is what the US will be in 20 years.
“Mom, We lost 5-1”
“Aw, that’s too bad”
“If only Earnie didn’t score that fifth goal we would have won 4-1”
lol
Or just play the game with no goalie and go undefeated for the season.
Sports, like life, sometimes are not fair. Get used to it kiddies.
This, IMHO, is why kids go bananas when things don't go their "way", or they meet with their first rejection. They don't know how the hell to handle it since they've always been shielded from defeat, etc.
How are children supposed to grow & learn from mistakes if they're never allowed to fail in the first place?????
How about we just get the teams together, and flip a coin? The winner gets first pick of two trophies, then everyone goes out for pizza.
Down by four? Kick the ball in your own net and win.
Very good strategy. My daughters(17) soccer coach instructs the girls to shoot from outside the box when they go 4 up. He also has them try harder and more frequent passes before a shot. They still end up scoring, but practice outside shots in the process, plus it doesn’t give the appearance of letting up.
“Down by four? Kick the ball in your own net and win.”
Good point, bad math.
I used to coach in a youth soccer league. We had the score run up on us a few times, maybe 12-3 or so at the worst. Not much fun, but we were able to work with our kids on the sidelines - what are they doing that's working? Why can't we stop them?
Similarly, we played against teams significantly worse than us. We took the opportunity to mix up our lineup, put kids in unfamiliar positions so a defender could try being out on a wing, etc. It gave our kids broader experience, and definitely held them back from running up the score on the other team. We never won by more than 4. We also pulled a player and played a man down rather than let a short handed opponent forfeit to us - we still won. (their players played the entire game and were beat, we had subs)
The thing is: we (coaching staff) were talking to our kids, telling them what we were doing and why the whole time. This is how you build character. You play to win, but with respect. You don't need some idiotic rule to tell you not to run up the score.
My thoughts exactly — why even play the game?
And, for those kids who may grow up to be professional soccer players, are they hurting their future abilities by holding them back from their full potential?
I’m just waiting for the day when they tell the “A” students they can no longer make an “A”, or they’ve done enough to get a “B” and must stop, because it’s making the “C” students feel bad.
But what's likely going on here is yet another display of liberalism who feel compelled to place boots on the backs of everyone’s neck because they are certain people are incapable of self-determination and must be guided by government. That is what is sickening!
To paraphrase something Rush Limbaugh once said, you can mandate any of these types of rules you want or do away with score keeping altogether. But, I guarantee, the kid ARE keeping score and they ALWAYS know who really won.
Canada is a politically correct, Gov’t bureaucratic wasteland. It’s a soft-version of Eastern Germany without the Stasi or labor camps.
The adults are idiots - every kid knew the score.
But losing because you're too good is ridiculous.
This is a good post.
I, too, have coached both my kids in youth soccer, basketball, and football.
And, I think this rule is ridiculous.
I will tell you that there is always that one d-bag coach that brings out “rules” like this.
For example, in one of the leagues I coach in, the league is a co-ed league for 7-9 year olds. There’s one coach that only takes 9 year old boys on his team. He wins nearly every game by (no exaggeration) 15 goals, all the while yelling out instructions like “Kill it” (at least he’s referring to the ball, not the opposing players...I think), “Keep on the pressure, they’ll crack again”, “their goalie can’t stop any shot, keep drilling it right at the goalie”, and other instructions that seem just a little much. The one time I saw a team giving them a real game (meaning the score was “only” 5-3, in their favor at the half), he went bananas on his team at the half. I was half a field away and could hear him barking. The team came out and scored over 10 goals in the second half. I guess he can be proud of his motivational skills. Course, the guy has been coaching the same team since my son was in the league 5 years ago.
Again, this rule is stupid. But it’s usually idiots like this who make people think this rule sounds reasonable.
Little League baseball out here in N Californiacator land has a limit of 5 runs per inning by any team.
Our grandson is a lead off batter on his team and is batting over 500 and last night got 2 hits out 3 times at bat in a playoff win.
Their team beat a previously undefeated team 12-4, last night, inspite of having to stop twice in two separate innings because they scored 5 runs in each inning.
In one game our grandson in the third inning, hit a grandslam and his HR didn’t count because his team had 2 runs in that inning before his grandslam.
We have mixed feelings about this rule. The opposing coach is a poster boy for a bad coach. He tries to intimidate the umps and opposing coaches, that worked in the first inning and the young ump refused to be intimidated. This coach even tried to invoke the 5 run rule in an inning when our grandson’s team only had 4 innings. Fortunate both score keepers got to the ump and got our team back on the field to score another run.
Decades ago when I was an assistant coach, we had a similiar rule, but I believe it was 10 runs in any inning and if the team did that twice, the game was over and they won.
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