[mathking]

As a former college athlete and current HS coach for both athletics and robotics, I think Sean highlights a real danger, but an avoidable one. At the high school level, there are certainly coaches and even more certainly parents and fans who emphasize winning at all costs. Such as the fan Sean quoted from espn.com. But I have found the best coaches embrace a much more constructive philosophy. Most state athletic associations actually have mission statements that explicitly state that winning is a secondary consideration in sports. Maybe we should adopt a model like golf or ultimate frisbee, in which it is each competitors prerogative and responsibiliy to call penalties on himself or herself.

This year, our team got Chairman's feedback at our regional that was basically the same as the last two years: You had a great submission, you are strong everywhere, it was a really tough decision but we thought the other team had a greater overall impact, keep doing what you are doing. I will admit it was a little frustrating, for me and the kids. Not the not winning part but the "you did everything right but didn't win part." I found that being a cross-country coach prepared me for this.

In cross-country, you can't play defense. You have no control over how well your opponents run. All you can do is do your best. So we emphasize continuous improvement. Even things like titles are elusive sometimes. The runner with the third fastest time ever at the current Ohio High School State Championship course (which he ran as a junior) didn't win a title because he had to run against the second fastest kid ever. This leads to an interesting ethos in the sport. Most top competitors are friends. There certainly times when there is bad blood, but that is by far the exception. Most runners, most of the time, would rather run faster than place higher. When runners brag, we brag about times rather than wins. Most runners never win a race.

I remember one near the end of the season high school race. I was winning, but in a slow time. All of a sudden I hear my coach yell "Greg, you're on fire! Go!" I got a little pumped and finished with the win. After the race, I found out he was yelling for my teammate, who finished 10th, but improved his personal best mile time by 34 seconds in his last race of his career. My coach said nice job to me, then ran up and gave the other Greg a big hug. That stayed with me. I knew I wanted to be a coach who could be just as (more) excited about his slowest kid running a great race than for one of his fastest runners winning with an unimpressive time. He made every kid feel like they were important, this made (almost) every kid work really hard to impress him.

My point with this long digression is to say that sports itself is not the problem. It is the way you embrace sports and competition. If winning is more important than doing well, then in my view, your priorities need to be reexamined. Competition can be fun and constructive. And we do learn lessons when we don't win. One of the most important duties of a good mentor is to help make sure that the students learn those lessons.