Ottawa Soccer League: Score Too High, You Lose

http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=2463 ^ | William M. Briggs

[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...

[JimRed]

If they really want to equalize things, make it “fair”, they could simply categorize the kids’ skill levels during tryouts, and assign comparable numbers of kids at the various levels to each team. Even then, sombody’s going to have a bad day once in a while; that’s life, learn to deal with it!

One local rec baseball league has (or used to have) a “mercy” rule that ended the game when one team took a ten run lead. But I’m sure most of the kids would rather play the game out than go home early.

[Katya]

I didn’t read the article only the excerpt....is this a recreational league? Because at the rec level, as opposed to travel teams, soccer leagues are often formed to encourage play, meaning teams are selected to be balanced so that everyone gets to play. Now, you sometimes get coaches that will load a team, but rate all the players as average.
So...leagues will often penalize coaches who do this in other ways.

[ThunderSleeps]

I know what you mean. Our league is "developmental" soccer - teaching kids the fundamentals of the game, team play, sportsmanship, etc. Notably it is *not* the competitive league. Heck, coaching from the sidelines on a throw in I've often told kids on the other team "move, get open!" when they were just standing there. Of course, I tell my guys "move, don't let him get open!" ;-) Part of the game.

Came across one team where the coach had obviously coached his kids as if it was the competitive league, maybe even European style soccer. Very physical, lots of contact well above and beyond simply getting getting open or trying to get past a defense. It was plain their gameplan as coached was intimidation over skill. We didn't sink to their level, instead we rested our fastest players and late in the game put them in - they ran around the brutes and we beat them by 2. ;-) However, my co-coach did "invite" their coach to have some discussions about sportsmanship out behind the public restrooms. He's about 6-5 and 250+, oddly enough, the opposing coach declined the offer.

[dfwgator]

Canada is a politically correct, Gov’t bureaucratic wasteland. It’s a soft-version of Eastern Germany without the Stasi or labor camps.

VS

We have no room to talk.

[PGR88]

As Mark Steyn once pointed out - once the key planks of Progressive/Socialist big-Government are in place, it doesn’t matter if the leader is “Conservative” because the Progressive agenda will keep moving forward regardless.

Canada is already there - Obama has put the USA not far behind.