Good Sportsmanship Takes the Win Out of Their Sails

Here we are three weeks into the youth soccer season, and hey, so what if my daughter’s team has only won a single game?

We don’t keep score.

That’s because our team knows that only poor sports, not to mention rule breakers, keep score. Yes, the rules of the American Youth Soccer Organization clearly state that at this wonderfully non-competitive level, nobody is to keep score.

And I applaud this policy.

As any good parent knows, the very last thing that an active 5-year-old needs these days is undue pressure to actually distinguish her team’s goal from that of the opposition. (Did I say opposition? Silly me. Those aren’t our opponents. They’re our friends!)

Anyway, as observed in the field, just remembering to occasionally wave toward your parents’ video camera can be confusing enough for today’s active kindergartner.

And too much emphasis on the finer points of the actual game can ultimately be counterproductive to the larger goal of being a good sport. This is certainly not good.

So what I’m saying here is if any of you catch somebody keeping score, please report them to the authorities at once. . . .

Hahaha. Just a little youth soccer humor here. I don’t expect you to actually do that. That would certainly not be very sportsmanlike.

Plus, our coach has warned us against such behavior.

In a preseason meeting of the team parents, she sat us all down and told us in no uncertain terms:

“After our third game, I want our girls to have the sportsmanship patch on their uniforms.”

Which sounded good to me. A goal! (At least in the figurative sense.)

So since that meeting, I have been working with my daughter in an effort to encourage her love of soccer, while carefully tempering my own enthusiasm so as not to give her the idea that, uh, winning is important.

It has been an unqualified success.

During a recent Saturday game, I observed my daughter: holding hands with a teammate as they skipped down the field, engaging in a spontaneous hug with two other teammates and tickling yet another teammate.

All this she managed to do while steadfastly ignoring the unsportsmanlike calls of several parents to the effect that THE BALL, THE BALL needed to be kicked.

But, hey, I certainly didn’t get upset. I knew that my girl was learning a larger lesson: It doesn’t matter how you play the game. You still get your snack at the end.

And besides, sure enough, another little girl (who happened to be wearing a different team’s uniform) got to that ball even as my daughter did not.

This other little girl then ran at a rather brisk pace down the field and kicked the ball, with absolutely no hesitation, through the goal posts.

If I were keeping a tally--which I was not--I would say that she scored a goal.

Then this seemingly normal little girl plastered a gigantic smile across her face and ran--like she was Pele or somebody--down the entire length of the field with her arms raised above her head, her hands clenched in fists. I am not making this up.

And, of course, I felt sorry for this girl.

Not to mention her poor misguided parents! I mean, what can they possibly be teaching this child? I could only shake my head.

Things just went downhill from there. For the other team, I mean.

This particular little girl--who looked at least 6, if you ask me--repeated her performance time and again. And not only did she run down the field after each so-called goal, but her coach began swinging her around, saying all the wrong things , like, “Way to go!”

It was shameful.

Then I looked toward the field, finally, to see how my daughter was taking this blitzkrieg. I couldn’t find her right away. She and a teammate were off in a corner, apparently combing the field in search of a four-leaf clover.

So we were saved. My own daughter’s sportsmanlike behavior, to date, has not been challenged. She was having fun, which, after all, is what’s it’s all about. It made me smile and I actually felt at peace.

Then the assistant coach from the other team ventured down to where our team parents were huddled, video cameras now hanging rather limply by our sides.

“So what’s with that one little girl?” one of the parents (not me!) asked.

“Oh, she has older brothers,” the coach said.

Which, of course, explains everything.

Males can be so competitive. It’s a crying shame.

Dianne Klein’s column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. Readers may reach Klein by writing to her at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626, or calling (714) 966-7406.