Quote:
Originally Posted by 2544HCRC
Is there a link to this white paper? I would love to read it.
I would like to give 2 examples of the problem as I see it. The first is from a local wrestling club. They started as a way to expose young kids to wrestling ...
example 2 are the local volunteer fire departments. They have the same problem....
I see the same sort of thing happening in FRC... .
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How does limiting others potential improve your situation? Should the fire department allow for less skilled individuals to put out fires? Should they use old worn out equipment?
For the wrestling, should you tell a kid to stop working out? Should you tell them they are not allowed to practice and improve until the others catch up?
I wrestled in middle school and high school. The coach talked to me quite extensively about doing free-style and doing Grecco Roman in order to be better. My choice was to do other things (4-H, Supermileage, chess tournaments...). My parents supported my choices. My senior year, I won my confernce, but lost sectionals. If I had listened to my coach, I might have been good enough to win sectionals. Possibly even do well at regionals, but I was not gifted enough to win semi-states or states in wrestling. While I did have a little regret at the time, my parents supported and overall, it helped me realize the power of my choices (I would make the same choices looking back). That being said, I would not want to disallow any of the semi-state or state level wrestlers from doing summer camp or travel league or ... If their choice is to be the 4th best wrestler in the State of Indiana for the 135 lb weight class for 1997... So be it. It wasn't my choice, but they should be allowed to make that choice. Their efforts might get them a wrestling scholarship. I made the choice to persue other things, and thus had lower than ideal results.
If your kids are not that interested, then they do not deserve to win awards against those that are trying harder and doing better work,
and that is OK. Your job as a mentor is to help them realize the ramifications of not taking the initiative. In my opinion, you should also help coach them with dealing with the dissappointment*. If the team didn't fund raise enough to go to the championship... then you don't go to the championship. Your team didn't work as hard as team XYZ, then don't be upset with team XYZ when you are beat by them. It is perfectly fine to be dissappointed with poor results. It is a choice though to use that dissappointment to improve, stay the same, or fold up camp. What I find frustrating in this thread, is there is a lot of good advice on how to improve for relatively smalle means with big returns. If your team doesn't want it to get too crazy, that is fine. If your team wants to do better... they should begin to follow the advice others are willing to give.
*Also, in my opinion, the worst thing you can do is comfort your team by calling the winners cheaters. Unless you have proof of a team deliberately
breaking a rule, you need to put a stop to the cheater talk right away. Having access to a resource your team hasn't developed is not cheating. Going to multiple events is not cheating. Talking with companies and presenting FIRST in order to get sponsorship dollars is not cheating. Many students will automatically come to the "they cheated" conclusion on their own. As a mentor you can choose to foster that behaviour or stop it.