I recently began a stint coaching my sons soccer team and I have discovered that, in this league at least, sports aren't what they used to be.
In Americas on-going effort to feminize everyone and avoid a hurt feeling at any and all costs, youth sports have been reduced to glorified scrimmages where nothing is learned. Once a great place to learn life lessons, the intricacies of a sport and to keep in shape, today's feminized and psycho-babbled sporting endaveors are nearing irrelevancy.
In this league no one is allowed, of course, to keep score. I'm not sure when this trend started but it stinks. I know, you can't encourage, God forbid, competion or instill a sense of wanting to win. That would be horrible. But the real tragedy is this: Sports have an important role in teaching life lessons and as we sissify them in accordance with some psycho-babbling idiots rules we lose that. Kids need to learn how to win. They also need to learn how to lose. Those are important and unavoidable facts of life. You must understand how to win with grace and lose with dignity. You should take satisfaction in giving 100% and falling short. You should respect an opponent that gives their all but doesn't quite get the best of you. You should also know what you did wrong so that you can understand what it takes to get better, to work hard and earn the victory next time out. It's how people improve themselves. But no, now we teach that everyone's a winner so, in conlusion, winning takes no effort. You are, by virtue of setting foot on the field, a winner. Sounds nice doesn't it? Too bad it isn't grounded in realty. Too bad that a player can realize someday much later in life that he never learned the skills he needed to be good at the sport because he never realized he wasn't winning.
This new approach to sports is startling to me. The mother's gather round like a social event and ask me who is bringing snacks next time. Snacks? Do we need snack time during a game now? Why, I wonder, are kids increasingly obese? Well, they aren't allowed to compete, they aren't allowed to experience the thrill of victory, they aren't allowed to experience the sting of defeat so that they can take steps to not experience it again, and they're given snack time during games. Is it any wonder they just meander around the field in a daze not caring? One thing that does not exist in this touchy-feely league is 100% effort.
Here's another great innovation: There are no benches. There are no boundries between parents and players. When I was growing up if you weren't playing you sat on the bench with your team and cheered them on, you stayed involved and invested in the game. In this league when a player isn't in they just wander over to where their parents are sitting and sit in portable lawn chairs eating Cheetos and Teddy Grahams. It's the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen to watch these kids scatter around the field and sit with mom and dad, munching away, rather than sitting together. There is no sense of team.
I was also informed recently that the coaches aren't supposed to coach during the games. What? You can cheer them on, sunbstitute the players, but not correct them. So they aren't supposed to learn anything then? You can't tell them what they did wrong and right? How absurd is this? The feminization of America has stormed onto the soccer fields and reduced them to events where fat kids wander around aimlessly or sit by their parents but they do not compete and they, despite what the mothers think, they do not win. They're just sort of there.
We don't have goalies either. Everyone should score, there needs to be more scoring lest the kid that can't shoot feel badly. God forbid he practices shooting until he's good--clearly that is just asking too much for it might cause hurt feelings. Never mind that some of these kids are interested in being goal keepers and have now had their development stunted by the feminization of soccer. Sorry kid, you can't learn that position, we must preserve peoples feelings first and foremost. If that means that you don't acquire the neccessary skills to succeed at a position that interests you until it's too late, well tough. Go sit with your mom and eat Cheetos like the rest of them.
This approach, this dumbing down of the game, is an abomination and teaches kids that nothing matters. Why practice and get good? Why work hard to improve yourself when everyone scores and everyone wins? What's the point? And what happens when you grow up and discover that yes, sometimes people lose in life. And sometimes they have to improve themselves to see to it that losing doesn't occur often. What of the kids who never have this goal of improvement instilled in them?
This bizarre culture in which everyone is supposed to win has had just the opposite effect. Everyone loses.
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