How does a Christian compete?
Posted by pastorpic on January 27, 2009
This “rant” (although I’m not really sure I’m ranting – more just questioning true ethics of competition) is in response to the following article:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,482825,00.html
OK – so if you didn’t read the article, I’ll give you a summary. One girls basketball team is playing against another. The winning team beats the losing team 100 to 0. That’s right , the losing team didn’t score a single point while the winning team reached the century mark. This is where it gets weird for me.
The winning school issues an apology for beating the losing team so badly, because apparently, the girls on the winning team were still shooting 3-pointers in the 4th quarter and the coaches were cheering for the girls more and more the closer they approached 100 points. The winning school apologized to the losing school for having a “non-Christian” attitude toward playing, which is an issue because the schools were Christian schools.
The coach disagreed, saying that his girls played with integrity, and then was fired – but we’re not given the exact reasons why.
So – here’s the issue to me. Is it really “unchristian” to beat a team 100 – 0? I mean – I was pretty lousy in track when I was in high school, and I never accused the winners for being unchristian, regardless of the margin of victory. I never asked them to slow down to make me look better, or accused them or humiliating me.
I think the situation that team found themselves in would have to be one of the hardest coaching situations around? How do you keep your girls excited to play when you are destroying another team? Is it really your team’s fault the other team doesn’t score? Would of it made a huge difference if the score had been 75 – 0? Or 50-0? It’s humiliating for the other team, either way.
Here’s how I would view it as a coach. If my team is destroying the other team, I know the tendency would be for my players to begin to feel sorry for the other team – to begin to play sloppy ball to give them a chance. It’s the way I sports with my kids. I intentionally don’t play as hard – because I know they don’t have a chance. But if I were to play that way against people my age, it would be humiliating to them. This used to happen with our church softball team. Occasionally, we’d get in a hitting streak and the other team was playing really bad defense. They had some kids playing on their team, and for whatever reason, just couldn’t get an out. We made a “rule” that if a team scored 10 runs in an inning, it was the same as 3 outs, but when that happened – the other team looked humiliated, not just because we scored 10 runs, but because they couldn’t get us out. Our guys started trying to hit pop fly’s to give them a chance – but that’s the last thing you want to do… Bad habits are hard to break – so if your team starts taking it easy, or playing light, then you have a problem later on.
So – as a coach, you find new things to motivate. You put in your reserves, and if they are still blowing the other team out, you set a goal. Hey guys – keep playing the way you know you should. Get some good playing time, and lets see if we can score 100 points. Why? Because if you don’t set a goal in front of your players they will begin playing down to their competition. If you don’t keep them motivated, they’ll begin playing sloppy to give the other team “a chance.” You don’t want bad habits in your team.
All the other team had to do was play basketball. If your team can’t score a single bucket, that is NOT the opposing team’s fault!
Honestly, I’d be more humiliated if I was on the opposing team and saw them start playing “keep-a-way” just to keep the score down. If they start playing out of their game and running out the clock and holding the ball for minutes at a time (which you can do in high school basketball because there is no shot clock) I would feel more embarrassed. At least when a basket is made, I get a new chance to try to score. If I lost 100-0, I’d be embarrassed – but I certainly wouldn’t blame the other team.
This coach made the best of difficult situation, in my opinion. But, I could be wrong? What do you think is the Christian thing to do? Should he have told his girls to let the other team score? Should he have talked to the other coach at half time and just had the other team forfeit the rest of the game? Would that have been fair to his 2nd (and may be 3rd string) that got time to play? Should he have played keep-a-way? Was there a good way to win this game – and isn’t the margin of victory relative after a certain range? If the score would have been 50-0, would it have really been any different?
Maybe I’m seeing this poorly because of my own competitive side – so post your perspective so we can learn from each other!
