Another weekend has passed too quickly.

Yesterday we went to Tyler's football game.  The team was getting their butt kicked so one of the moms shouted something about how they needed to remove the second string and keep playing the better kids.  That just made my blood boil.

My son does not play for a team that will win anything for being best.  The league has all teams go to the playoffs.  They are only 14 years old max and in 8th grade.  Do we really need to push winning?  Shouldn't we be pushing sportsmanship??  Maybe it's the teacher in me, but I cannot stand when parents make negative comments about the weaker players.  How are the kids supposed to learn if they don't play??  For my son, this is the last year he will be on a team where winning shouldn't matter.  He is still at an age where he can learn from his experience.  Plus, we paid the same as every other parent to have our kid on the club; we have the same rights to have our kid play.

I do believe that when the stakes are higher (high school or college), it makes sense to play the better kids.  However, they don't need to play all the time.  If the team is killing the other team, that's  a prime time to allow the less experienced or less skilled players time to play.  Sadly I've witnessed coaches forget that they even had less skilled players as their team embarrassed another team.

This burr has been in my saddle since Tyler was six and he played soccer.  As it turns out, he had better skills as a daisy picker than soccer player, but what the hell, he needed to learn.  So, when the coaches asked who wanted to be in the goal, he volunteered (perhaps thinking it was an easy position as there was less running).  In any event, he wasn't in the goal for more than 40 seconds when he let in a goal.  The other kids on the team pitched a fit and wanted him out of the goal.  The coach complied and that was the end of Tyler's soccer career.  (It didn't help that Tyler's teammate told him he sucked when we were leaving the game that day.)

If we don't allow the six year olds to learn how to play, what hope is there.

Adults need to learn how to be the grown-ups.