As a small child, for a series of biographical reasons (I was mainly raised by, and lived with, my grandparents, while my parents lived and worked abroad, until the end of primary school) I was not offered the option of engaging in regular extra-curricular activities, including sports. Then, by the time I was old enough to take the initiative myself, I was convinced that I was not good enough to engage in any organised sports. I wanted to play volleyball, but all the kids in the local girls volleyball club had been playing for years and were much better than me. Most importantly, training was important, of course, but fixtures were the main event…and I was terrified by the idea of playing in a real match. I went to training sessions only for a couple of months, skipping the weekend matches; but I quickly realised that this was not really how things were meant to be, and just stopped going. I really only rediscovered physical activity as a young adult – and although you really should not think of me as an accomplished athlete in any way whatsoever, I think it’s fair to say that I have become fitter and learnt more skills (how to swim better, how to do cross-country skiing, etc.) throughout my adult life. For me, what did the trick was the absence of a competitive dimension in most of the sports offer for adults – the fact that not everything rotates around matches, fixtures, and races. The emphasis is on staying fit and learning something new. Of course, competitive opportunities exist among adults and even senior adults, but by and large the emphasis is on competing with yourself (becoming a bit better, or a bit faster, at something).
Now, maybe I would have developed a different attitude towards competitive sports had I started earlier (hence the initial autobiographical disclaimer); but it doesn’t feel that way. What is more, I am seeing the exact same attitude in my son, who (unlike me) is offered plenty of opportunities – and who, as a boy, is very much exposed to socialisation via team sports. He is strong; he has a lot of stamina for things like cycling, running and swimming; he is not too keen on ball sports nor particularly good at them, but he can enjoy them as long as these are played in a non-competitive setting or with a low competitive element. Matches and races, however, just putt him off – even in the things he is good at, like swimming. And finally, of course, I see this ambivalence towards sports in so many girls – not in my daughter, as it happens, but in so many others.
Now, maybe kids like my son and so many girls I know will just discover what they like as adults – as I did – and that is fine. Also, if they are lucky, they will have parents who offer them plenty of non-competitive opportunities for physical activities throughout their childhood, beyond organised sports. But many will not, and for many organised sports simply are the entry point into discovering physical activity. I therefore just do not understand why we do not set up children’s organised sports with a much larger non-competitive component – more similar to the kind of offer that usually targets adults. We know that physical activity is intrinsically good and enjoyable: it keeps you healthy, for sure, but it also just makes you feel good, and is great for your mental wellbeing. We know, as adults, how rewarding it is to master a new skill without comparing yourself to others, but only to your past self: to see yourself get better at something. Why do we not think that this is true for kids, as well? Why do we organise children’s sports as primarily competition-focused, and then just decide that kids who don’t enjoy that are simply “not sporty”?
It might not be the biggest problem in the world, but I think it’s something we could change fairly easily, and the benefits for many children, and future adults, would be noticeable.
{ 68 comments… read them below or add one }
DB 03.28.22 at 6:14 pm
Spot on. Where are the beer (pop, soda?) leagues for kids?
Ingrid Robeyns 03.28.22 at 7:19 pm
Hear, hear! SO much agree with this. Luckily there are some exceptions (hence non-competitive organised sports for children), like capoeria – but there are very few. And whether it’s easy to change this, is an open question – since it might well be that the majority of folks like the competitive element, and we are just a minority.
Mike Furlan 03.28.22 at 7:27 pm
“Where are the beer (pop, soda?) leagues for kids?”
Kids used to organize them, themselves. 10 or 20 neighborhood kids would play in the street, backyards, or get on their bikes ride the half mile to a larger park to play baseball, football, basketball whatever. I was horrible, bad vision even corrected with glasses, but I played anyway.
In the winter hockey in the ice covered alleys.
Or even more dangerous games in the Proviso Rail Yard.
Not possible now, kids are not allowed out of sight of adults, ever. And adults are busy. As Homer explained, when he and Marge are not there, TV is in charge. Now it is the phone. Don’t want to risk having your child abducted.
Miriam Ronzoni 03.28.22 at 7:46 pm
Thanks Ingrid. Yes you might be right, although anecdotally my guess is that it’s at least a sizeable minority, not a tiny one. I still think it wouldn’t be so difficult though: it’s about creating (some) extra offer, not about replacing the current one, no? There are so many “non sporty” kids out there who might enjoy some non competitive physical activity, me thinks…
MisterMr 03.28.22 at 7:50 pm
When I was a kid I was very uncoordinated, and I hated all team sport because it felt like it was my fault if the team lost.
Later I moved to fencing and finally to martial arts.
As these are solo sports I didn’t feel the same psychological pressure.
I’m not a very competitive guy but it is in the nature of martial arts that you have to spar against someone, so even now at 46 I do sometime partecipate to some local tournament (old fart category), generally with bad results but who cares.
I think the big difference is that an adult can accept a bad result in a sport competition, but a kid will take it much more deeply.
On the other hand, I think part of the reason kid sports are competitive is that they are modeled after big ticket adult sports, that are more spectacles than actual sports.
Murali 03.28.22 at 9:09 pm
Non competitive sports do exist. Children playing soccer or badminton out in the street or playground or just shooting some hoops is non-competitive. If course within the context of the game people may be competing with each other to score a point or prevent the other from scoring a point, but that is a trivial kind of competition. No one is cut from the team for not being good enough. There are no tournaments etc. That’s just what people coming together to play a game for fun looks like. It is informal when organic. For a somewhat more formal setting, PE lessons in school where the teacher has the children play a certain sport or lets the children play whatever sport they want would also count. Another example is children and teens cycling/roller skating/skate boarding in the park or street.
The reason why children don’t just run to just improve fitness or health for the sake of it is the same reason why children don’t like to eat their vegetables. Doing these things is a matter of personal discipline which requires a bit of maturity. Children will eventually develop this, but you should expect to see less of this among children than adults.
Of course, the more lucrative professional competitive sports are, the more you see it overtaking everything else. Sports interacting with capitalism gives you some weird effects. The way football basketball and baseball are really competitive and very visibly so is partly a product of how these things are pipelines for professional play. Of course professional sports will exist regardless of economic system. But industry size, remuneration and visibility must have some effect on the degree to which competitive play crowds out non competitive play. I also think that schools compete against one another for other reasons as well. E.g pride, solidarity, rivalry etc. Hence sports teams organised by the school just like chess clubs, choir or band will be competitive. A lot of people like to compete for its own sake and belonging to one school rather than another creates a “natural” team which serves as an avenue for this competitiveness to be expressed.
Matt 03.28.22 at 9:44 pm
It’s been a long time since I was a kid (alas), and I don’t have kids of my own, but when I was a kid, lots of sports were more or less divided into “recreational” and “competitive” or “club” leagues. Even in the recreational leagues people kept score and the like, and it was certainly more fun to win than to lose, but there was more emphasis on making sure everyone played – even the really bad players on a team were supposed to be given playing time and real chances, not just sat on the bench. Many school teams were like this, too, at least through jr high, where there would be teams broken up by ability level (I think I was on the “C” basketball team the last year I played.) That all seemed and seems good to me, by in my recollection, the desire to move to be more competitive came at least as much from the kids as from the adults.
I migrated towards activities that were more informal – skateboarding, snow board, nowadays kayaking. There are competitions in these things, of course, and I have even taken part in a tiny handful of them (with, at best, extremely modest success), but most of the time they are things people do for fun, and not for competition. (Interestingly, in Australia, where I live now, there is a lot more organized youth kayaking than I’ve seen in the US, but it’s mostly geared towards slalom kayaking, and so with at least the implicit goal of racing.) I think that the biggest hurdle for the “mostly for fun” sports is that the organization is left up to individuals a lot more, so parents can’t, say, drop the kid off at practice as easily. It will often be difficult for kids to get involved in these things unless the parent is actively involved him or her self, or is at least facilitating.
MrMister 03.28.22 at 10:52 pm
I third this. As a boy, I was very alienated from sports. Two main reasons were 1) I strongly disliked the competitive element; 2) I was not very masculine, and the laddishness of sports culture felt alien and threatening (these reasons seem to me to be not ~entirely~ separate). At my parents’ demand, I nonetheless cycled through various sporting activities but hated all of them until I eventually discovered fencing–which was too idiosyncratic to support a large competitive scene, and too nerdy to have a toxic jock culture associated. But this is something that I only found after much trial and error, and which I could only access because my parents were affluent and could afford the equipment and club fees. Given the immense benefits of physical activity–and the benefits that physical activity in youth continues to provide throughout the life course–it strikes me as extremely unfortunate that non-competitive sports and sports without “jock” culture associated are so inaccessible.
I do suspect, though, that my sort of personality profile (sensitive and bookish young boy with an uneasy relationship to masculine gender norms who then grew up to be gay, to the surprise of nobody) is overrepresented in academia, so my vigorous assent may be misleading as a guide to the values of the population.
Sean 03.28.22 at 11:14 pm
One problem is that some people are competitive, and due to bad theory of mind assume that everyone wants a physical activity to be competitive. So given a chance, they make any physical activity be about competition, and ignore that the people who are not keen for competition, the people with less physical resources than them,* or the people with less money and time than them drift away. In fact, when those people drift away, its easier for them to have their own competitive activity. The people who need competition to stay motivated don’t understand that competition (and the additional expenses and demands which come with it – standardized equipment, travel to competitions, volunteer work organizing those competitions, keeping rankings up to date so competitors can find challenging opponents) drive other people away.
I don’t like to say “gifts” because (eg.) someone brought up to be physical has advantages which people raised differently will have a hard time overcoming – but you can’t change the past, so whether an advantage is inborn or based on past experience is irrelevant.
Robert Allen 03.29.22 at 2:16 am
‘Now, maybe I would have developed a different attitude towards competitive sports had I started earlier (hence the initial autobiographical disclaimer); but it doesn’t feel that way.’
It doesn’t matter when you start. You eventually run into an abusive coach who spoils the experience for you. My rude awakening came in 9th grade, after 4 blissful years of playing baseball and football on various neighborhood-based teams. I was a little too exuberant for the Napoleon Complex running the freshman football show. He put me in my place, alright: his verbal abuse, to cut to the chase, rendered me incapable of watching my 3 children play competitive sports sans trepidation. It’s not competition per se that is problematic. It is ******* ADULTS interfering with children at play. RFGA, Ph.D.
Philippe O 03.29.22 at 2:43 am
To reward parents who is driving and supporting children activities ?
Without competitiveness, its just “children play” which while fun for children boring for parents. With competition, parents can indulge in cheering their children, and if their child is victorious rewarded with pride (my child is so much better).
JakeB 03.29.22 at 3:34 am
I see Mike beat me to it. Indeed, we played football (of a sort), baseball (of a sort), soccer, basketball, kickball, not to mention sometimes hikes of an hour or too, mudball fights, and bike riding, all without our parents being involved or even knowing where we were most of the time. We would have gone swimming if any of us had had a pool, or if there had been a swimming hole close enough. (There’s a terrific essay by Ken Dryden, the Montreal Canadiens goalie, about what made players like Guy LaFleur so great, where he hypothesizes that it was just that spending hours on the ice with no particular, er, goal in mind, doing nothing but messing around with skating, the stick, and the puck, that gave him and other such inspired players such creative ways of playing the game.)
But also I totes agree about the good that could be done by having more of the kind of activities you speak of, particularly in the world we live in now. I started doing tai chi in my twenties — an old man before my time — but I am still doing it a couple of decades later, and note just how happy my joints are with me for trying to do it every day.
Abahachi 03.29.22 at 5:29 am
I think I want to emphasise the distinction between kinds of sport and the ways in which they are run. Team sports involve some degree of competition against others, with the training being a means to an end; lots of individual sports can easily be focused on individual improvement rather than competition; but both can be organised completely around competition, and you’re right that this is the dominant approach when it comes to children. I loathed sport at school; everything was made competitive, even things that were more naturally suited to an ethos of participation and self-improvement – which strongly suggests that this was a conscious policy – and, worse in my view, it meant that only children who were naturally talented or advanced in growth got any attention or training, as potential competitors, while everyone else was made to feel useless and largely left to their own devices. In winter this meant cross-country, aka “go and jog round the park while we focus on the decent rugby players” – which I loved, until they decided to draft me into the cross-country team.
The other thing this reminds me of is an excellent history of football in Germany, which noted widespread resistance in the early decades precisely because football favoured a limited number of people whereas Turnen – collective physical and gymnastic exercise – was about the health of the entire Volk.
C Mullan 03.29.22 at 9:19 am
In fact the Blair/Brown government attitude to school sports aligned quite well with this suggestion, allowing schools to run dance, yoga and other non-competitive forms of exercise for the kids of that cohort. Some of it lasted quite well: my child, who was averse to the competitive sports, was able to do various forms of non-competitive biking for GCSE Physical Education in 2014/15.
However, the emphasis was changed by the Conservative government which switched back to competitive sport. The stated intent is to train elites and instil habits of leadership and subordinate teamwork rather than allowing children to discover and pursue enjoyable and beneficial physical activity.
Trader Joe 03.29.22 at 11:33 am
I think the article makes a good point that there should be more ‘open play’ opportunities for kids who don’t prefer competitive sports.
That said, I’ve had the fortune of coaching children at many ages and a few sports and its probably my self-biased view that good coaching overcomes that problem in most cases. I’d opine 3 things:
Most kids are somewhat naturally goal directed since they are often raised that way in the most mundane aspects of life. Providing a degree of competition sharpens the focus and moves them towards skill development. Particularly younger children (say <10 yrs) are easily distracted and competition brings focus. The only way to learn if you are “good” at something is to practice it hard enough to find out. If a person doesn’t want to be ‘good’ at something, that’s where open play is a viable option though I question how much kids would stick with it.
In my experience the over-emphasis on competition most commonly comes from parents, siblings or peers (in that order) and when a kid who is plainly not competitive is thrust into a competitive sport its really a matter for the parent and kid to negotiate as to why they are there. In some cases the parent is encouraging it because it is their interest or they think they should – in some cases, its to try to kick-start a kid towards some activity that would otherwise overindulge in video games, internet etc. In such cases its not about being good or winning, its about doing ‘something’
In most youth leagues coaches are volunteers. They are not trained and not paid. Guess what – people who volunteer to coach sports are people who are typically inherently competitive and usually had at least some skill in the sport. This means the presumptive team leader is most likely to value the competitive aspect of sports and try to infuse that culture to the team. I’m not saying you need professional coaches, but I think its to be expected that those who are motivated to coach will also be motivated to push kids towards being competitive. Those who would lead an ‘open play’ activity would have a quite different mindset.
All that said, I’d agree there should be more open-play options. Its something of a lost art in many areas where kids don’t play in the street or wander around neighborhoods as was once more common.
TM 03.29.22 at 12:00 pm
I second Mike @3. When I was a child, it was unusual that school age children spent their play time under adult supervision. It would never have occurred to our parents to go with us to the playground or organize recreational activities for us. Children would simply organize activities that they found fun, which may or may not have involved some competitive component but never dead serious.
I sincerely pity today’s children.
TM 03.29.22 at 12:04 pm
As an aside, it’s worth pointing out that school sport as an institution is a very Anglosphere thing.
Jake Gibson 03.29.22 at 1:09 pm
Capitalist society foster dysfunctional competitiveness. Think about the disdain for non-competitive sports in some quarters. “Participation trophy”.
I never played any organized sports. For one thing I am on the left side of the curve in athleticism.
College and professional sports are good outlets for the pathologically competitive who have the requisite skill.
Scott P. 03.29.22 at 2:11 pm
On the other hand, I think part of the reason kid sports are competitive is that they are modeled after big ticket adult sports, that are more spectacles than actual sports.
The other way around, no? Many professional sports started as school sports — soccer, rugby, football for certain. The idea was to build character and teach the importance of teamwork to unruly private schoolkids — ‘the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton’ and all that.
Phil 03.29.22 at 4:09 pm
Growing up in the UK, I never encountered this “competitive fixture / training for the competitive fixture” mentality, perhaps mainly because sport wasn’t (only) extra-curricular: if you were good enough you would be picked for one of the school teams – which would involve a lot of training and practice matches in free time – but everyone, but everyone, had a couple of hours a week of Physical Education.
Which, unfortunately, was competitive as all hell, and not in a good way. There’s ‘competitive’ as in being the best individually, and then there’s ‘competitive’ as not being the one to let the team down; I’m talking about the latter. You were either good at it (whatever it was) or you weren’t, and if you weren’t, everyone made sure you knew it – including the teacher. I don’t remember ever being helped or encouraged by a PE teacher, whatever the game was (and I remember playing rugby, hockey, cricket, softball, tennis and volleyball). The attitude was that if you couldn’t do something, it could only mean that you weren’t really trying – so either you were scared of getting hurt and needed to toughen up (mentally, physically or both), or you thought you were above it all and needed to be taught a lesson.
I remember one week when the rugby pitch was unexpectedly waterlogged & our teacher let us go to the school gym and find something to do there; I and another, equally ‘weedy’ kid found a shuttlecock, a badminton net and a couple of racquets, and spent a very pleasant half hour that way. I’d go so far as to say that I was getting quite good at it. Next week, of course, the rugby pitch was back to being normally knee-deep in mud, and me and my friend were back to getting picked last and keeping out of the way of the ball.
Postscript 1: Some time in my 30s I started doing a programme of exercises for people who wanted to get fit, and discovered to my surprise that I was quite extraordinarily unfit. There was an exercise involving lying face down and lifting your head and one leg; initially I could do about four of those before I needed to stop and get my breath back. So cheers, school PE teachers, thanks for all you did for me.
Postscript 2: Happily, my son’s (weekly, compulsory) PE lessons (circa late 2000s) were a lot more imaginative and had a lot less of a fixation on team games; he did judo, fencing and climbing, among other things. So maybe things have improved.
justme 03.29.22 at 4:36 pm
Here’s an example of an alternative approach in cross country skiing from the country that is (by far) the most dominant in it:
https://fasterskier.com/2019/05/the-norwegian-way-from-hbos-real-sport-with-bryant-gumbel/
Michael Cain 03.29.22 at 5:37 pm
I’m honestly curious about how people here would respond to the question, “Why is competition omni-present in children’s academics?” I remember the epiphany I had in grade-school PE class one day, when I was struggling to master some basic skill, and experiencing a mixture of jealousy and hatred for the kids who made it look so easy. “You know, they probably feel exactly the same way about me in math class.” And while I largely had the choice of opting out of competitive sports, kids don’t get the choice to opt out of competitive academics.
SusanC 03.29.22 at 7:32 pm
And then there’s games that go something like this:
(Which is for a skipping or clapping game, if you don’t recognise it. The particular lyric might be specific to the U.K. and a particular time period).
Suzanne 03.29.22 at 7:40 pm
As other posters have noted, there are non-competitive options for children’s sport and play. I would think, however, that the positive aspects of competitive sport, also already noted (development of concentration, commitment, understanding of the need to work if you want to get better at something, joys of victory, agony of defeat, etc.) are things that many girls and women have not been able to enjoy until recently. It wasn’t really okay for women to really want to win something and say that they really wanted to win and winning mattered to them. I write as someone who is generally non-athletic and experienced regularly as a child the embarrassment and/or humiliation of getting picked among the last for teams because I wasn’t very good. I should note this pain was inflicted by other kids acting as team captains. When adults chose the teams, they chose regardless of skill level. (Eventually I found a sport I was pretty good at.)
Eric Boot 03.29.22 at 7:40 pm
Not sure. I agree that there can be an overemphasis on competition, which can actually demotivate children to participate in a particular sport. That said, I’m struck by the examples given of ‘good’, non-competitive sports: cross-country skiing, swimming, and the like. These are all sports you do on your own; they are not team-sports. My own experience with competitive team sports has been far more positive and I feel I learned a lot from it: how to work together towards a common goal, how to cover for your team mates when they make a mistake, how not to be selfish but place the team’s interest first. We were always taught that however good the individual players are, you win and you lose as a team. I was motivated to do my best for myself (I simply wanted to do well, and I indeed did want to win), but also for my team mates. In my own experience, the competitive element heightens the concentration and it simply felt more exciting because of it. In sum, I’m not at all calling for toxic competitiveness of course, but I disagree that a competitive element is inherently bad, as the suggestion in many of the comments seems to be. Furthermore, I’d like to break a lance for team sports. Team sports can provide somewhat of an antidote to the rampant individualism that is so typical of our societies.
reason 03.29.22 at 8:49 pm
I’m just a bit puzzled particularly in the case of team sports, what the point would be without a competitive aspect. The games have scores and the purpose of the game is to score. There is nothing more demoralizing for a team than to lose by a high score. I remember when I lived for a couple of years as an Australian they asked me whether I wanted to play “social” cricket or league cricket. For me that was a strange question – in Australia there were massive numbers of leagues of different standard, but at every level the players wanted to win.
I really think the secret is to cater to many different levels. I think maybe the person who suggested that the problem is where schools are organized by schools rather than by local clubs. Then it becomes much harder to people to choose what level they want to play at.
maidhc 03.29.22 at 9:56 pm
Eton didn’t have any playing fields at the time of the Battle of Waterloo.
The British school sports thing started with Thomas Arnold at Rugby, where he became head in 1828.
justme 03.29.22 at 10:35 pm
Responding to reason @25, just as an example, I play soccer 1-2 times a week with a group of over-40 men. We show up, divide up into teams, literally simply by switching into light or dark shirts until we have roughly even numbers, and then we play. If one team is really dominating play, we’ll shuffle players around until it’s more balanced.
We try hard, everyone wants their team to score. But no one knows the score at the end. We don’t keep time, we play for however long we have the field, or until the group decides we’re too tired. At that point, we’ll just agree to play until the next goal, or something. There’s no ref, we stop when someone says they were fouled. There’s never been a serious argument.
This is possible because a critical mass of the participants manage to set the right tone.
I think that’s sort of what people have in mind for “non-competitive” team sports.
J-D 03.29.22 at 10:52 pm
This is also true of the majority of individual sports. If two people hit a tennis ball back and forth over the net but make no effort at all to score points and take no note of it when they do, then what they are doing differs from what people normally refer to as ‘playing tennis’ to such an extent that I would no longer refer to it as the same activity. (They might like it better than the competitive game–I’ve got no quarrel with that; but better or worse it’s not the same.)
MisterMr 03.29.22 at 10:53 pm
@Scott P. 19
I doubt the playing fields of Eaton (or other high school) are more competitive than the Premier League.
However most kids will look at the premier league and think that that is true football, whereas what they do is just an imitataion.
Now if we think to sport as something fun that one does to keep fit, people doing noncompetitive or low level competitive are the vast majority, however if we think of cultural impact the top league will always be predominant.
And in fact, the couch potato who only watches sports in TV but never actually does something is often quite competitive in spirit. This might be an example of negative effect of competitivity, if the couch potato stays on the coach because at some level he (or she) can’t accept losing.
Test 03.30.22 at 7:25 am
I doubt the playing fields of Eaton (or other high school) are more competitive than the Premier League.
However most kids will look at the premier league and think that that is true football, whereas what they do is just an imitataion.
Now if we think to sport as something fun that one does to keep fit, people doing noncompetitive or low level competitive are the vast majority, however if we think of cultural impact the top league will always be predominant.
And in fact, the couch potato who only watches sports in TV but never actually does something is often quite competitive in spirit. This might be an example of negative effect of competitivity, if the couch potato stays on the coach because at some level he (or she) can’t accept losing.
TM 03.30.22 at 8:53 am
J-D 29: “If two people hit a tennis ball back and forth over the net but make no effort at all to score points and take no note of it when they do, then what they are doing differs from what people normally refer to as ‘playing tennis’ to such an extent that I would no longer refer to it as the same activity.”
Well I used to play Badminton a lot, it’s a very popular game and doesn’t require more equipment than a lawn and two rackets. Well actually you need a net but you can play it easily without one. For many years it never occurred to me that this was a “competitive sport”. We never counted points. Actually the way we usually played the game, all players tried to keep the ball in the air as long as possible.
When we played soccer, it was similar to the way described at 28. There were goals but they weren’t usually counted.
Another thing I fondly remember: in may family, we avidly played a cardgame called Schafkopf (which is not much related to the American Sheepshead). The game is also played by adults in pubs for money and there are prize competitions. But children just play for fun, playing round after round without keeping track of who won more often. An advantage of the game is that each set is played quickly and doesn’t affect the next set. There’s no need to declare anybody winner. Also, there are no fixed teams, they change from set to set. This way of playing among children, whether cardgames or sports, is really common. Anybody who doesn’t reqognize it may have missed something important.
TM 03.30.22 at 9:02 am
J-D 29: “If two people hit a tennis ball back and forth over the net but make no effort at all to score points and take no note of it when they do, then what they are doing differs from what people normally refer to as ‘playing tennis’ to such an extent that I would no longer refer to it as the same activity.”
Well I used to play Badminton a lot, it’s a very popular game and doesn’t require more equipment than a lawn and two rackets. Well actually you need a net but you can play it easily without one. For many years it never occurred to me that this was a “competitive sport”. We never counted points. Actually the way we usually played the game, all players tried to keep the ball in the air as long as possible.
When we played soccer, it was similar to the way described at 28. There were goals but they weren’t usually counted.
Another thing I fondly remember: in may family, we avidly played a cardgame called Schafkopf (which is not much related to the American Sheepshead). The game is also played by adults in pubs for money and there are prize competitions. But children just play for fun, playing round after round without keeping track of who won more often. An advantage of the game is that each set is played quickly and doesn’t affect the next set. each set has a winner but there is no no need to declare anybody winner overall. Also, there are no fixed teams, they change from set to set. This way of playing among children, whether cardgames or sports, is really common. Anybody who doesn’t reqognize it may have missed something important. (edited)
PeteW 03.30.22 at 10:43 am
@SusanC
Where I lived it was:
Reachy-peachy lollippopper
Rum tum tush!
Trader Joe 03.30.22 at 11:29 am
Even within the traditional stick and ball sports there are a lot of activities that have been developed which provide a good level of physical activity and usually develop some aspect of the related game but don’t in any way involve keeping score or determining ‘winners and losers.’ US readers might recognize games like sharks and minnows, red flag, pepper and rundown among dozens of others. As a coach its very rewarding to see less skilled kids take to some of these games, sometimes it even kindles some deeper interest and helps them see they have skill even if they aren’t terribly competitive – a worthwhile endpoint in itself.
Ultimately a participant in any activity whether its painting or piano or rugby or football has to want to do it in order to enjoy it and by enjoying it increasing the chance they’ll succeed at it subject to their own ability.
We’ve heard from people here that complain of being forced to play sport and hating it or being belittled by it. I suspect we could poll for people forced to take piano lessons or participate in school plays that were similarly mortified because they lacked talent or otherwise disdained participation.
In my view, parents and educators that ‘force’ these activities are typically well meaning in trying to expose people to a balanced set of activities so they can find out what it is they do enjoy. I’d again emphasize that the onus in on the coaches, instructors or whomever is in charge to try to design activities that embrace differences in skills and motivation while still pursuing the task of fielding a team or holding a show.
Scott P. 03.30.22 at 1:18 pm
I doubt the playing fields of Eaton (or other high school) are more competitive than the Premier League..
The point is they came first, and inspired the Premier League — not the other way around.
J, not that one 03.30.22 at 2:19 pm
I think for children especially, it gets hard, especially past a certain age, to find a situation where either individual sports like swimming or team sports like soccer are possible except as team competition. Even in the arts, though, things are often set up so that a group class is often geared to the most talented 10-25% of the population at that age. I’d say the same is true of most of the exercise classes we tried: with one exception, which ran only to age 5, they were not well geared for the clumsy or those who just required a little extra instruction and encouragement. Swim classes also became significantly less understanding of kids who stayed at the same level for a year or more at about age 6. For gymnastics and general gym classes, that was 3 (coincidentally the moment when parents weren’t on the gym floor helping). I can’t blame the parents alone for this.
Something that occurs to me is a comparison with math competitions, science fairs, etc. I was good at math but didn’t like competitions, something that annoyed my teachers. My child is the same way, and it’s been somewhat frustrating just because it can be difficult to find appropriate challenges of other kinds.
Z 03.30.22 at 2:35 pm
Why do we organise children’s sports as primarily competition-focused, and then just decide that kids who don’t enjoy that are simply “not sporty”?
In my country (and I guess many others), this is largely because state funds for sports clubs are largely a function of the results of the club in competitive endeavors, so clubs are structured around competitions because this is how they thrive, survive or die financially (now that I think of it, this must be the case in at least some Länder in Germany because when I showed up randomly at a club in spring in my then hometown and told them my time in the 100m Backstroke and Freestyle, they registered me for free and all but organized a party to welcome me, with the tiny condition that I would definitely participate to the up-coming competition, right?).
This is actually especially true for children sports because children by and large don’t like competitions so much (it takes a lot of time, it requires a lot of unpleasant training, by definition you usually don’t do too well etc.) so spotting a child with the potential to do well is an opportunity that most clubs can’t afford to miss (with the correlative effect that children who will quite obviously never participate competitively are indeed relatively neglected).
MisterMr 03.30.22 at 4:07 pm
@Test 31
Oh, yes mr. Test, I couldn’t agree more!
Words of a genius, I’d say.
Ray Vinmad 03.30.22 at 5:21 pm
I have some bad memories of being discouraged from playing by overly-competitive adults…but with my kids I found organized teams welcoming to novices.
Also, there are some sporty activities kids can do like boating or martial arts that may have competitions at times but aren’t organized around competitions.
Still, I agree. To broaden the base of concern, I want to advocate for much more support for youth activities everywhere! Teens in particular have so few outlets. Adults complain about their ennui or personal struggles or time spent online but what else is there for them? We do little to enable their development. Even though I live in a place that’s probably pretty good for kids, I don’t find there is much for kids after the age of 12. That’s just when they most need fun things to do to build skills! Communities leave it to the high schools and the high schools are usually places where sports and most activities are organized around ‘excelling and winning’ rather than around learning, developing, socializing, finding yourself, etc. If a kid doesn’t already play sports the one option they have around here for learning the basics of exercise is the weight room at the Y.
I have found things but one has to beat the bushes.
To get back to the main topic, it would be nice if there were more adults in kids’ sports taking the position it’s about having fun and learning not primarily about being the best at all times and winning. We need many more coaches who actively encourage kids to participate and help them get up to speed to do that when they simply want the experience of playing. I have one very sporty kid who has been reluctant to move away from the sports he is very good at to try new sports because of the fear of not being good enough at the new sports. So even with a child who is naturally athletic I struggle to find coaches who are primarily about teaching and having fun.
hix 03.30.22 at 7:23 pm
Oh comments again. My personal experience was also pretty bad during my youth. What motivated me to comment was a more theoretic observation of a rather curious modern development: Competitive pressure is starting to make youth football less and less competitive. Sounds absurd? Makeing rules like for grown ups and letting your team play to maximice wins at the lowest youth levels is a horrible way to develop the best future professional players. While it seems a rather bad goal in general to me to orient mass sport towards producing the best pro team. Now even that goal, and all the money put into scientific reserach to achiev that is motivating major changes. Changes seriously considered in youth football are: Extra player for the weaker team, small field with no goaly, equal play time for all, things like that. Not to make football more fun mind you! To produce most good pros.
MPAVictoria 03.30.22 at 7:28 pm
“Where are the beer (pop, soda?) leagues for kids?”
Funnily enough I gave up on “beer leagues” as an adult because they were full of grownups trying to relive their glory days of competitive youth sports. Had so many sweaty middle aged men screaming in my face that it just ruined the experience.
I completely agree with you Miriam that more non-competitive options would be a great thing for kids!
EB 03.30.22 at 8:47 pm
The children in my neighborhood played sports that you could consider competitive (baseball, kickball, basketball) for most of our after school hours, but we did them in an age-integrated (6 to 12 or so) and equipment-deficient (baseball was played on a dead-end street with a whiffle ball; basketball with a hoop on a garage; kickball in a muddy back yard) way. Most important, although each game was scored, we did not keep track of scores beyond one day. The teams were different each time a game was held, so what would have been the point? The point was being outdoors, having fun, learning some skills (although without coaching), and learning to cope with disappointment. It wasn’t hard to tell which kids would go on to become accomplished athletes in high school
EB 03.30.22 at 9:40 pm
#3 — wow, Mike Furlan, Proviso Rail Yards. Not the safest place to play!
Sean 03.31.22 at 12:50 am
@justme: great example! The same is true of card games and other activities. Sometimes the competition is just an excuse to be active and spend time with friends, and other times its very important to produce a definitive ranking and record it.
Robert Allen 03.31.22 at 2:29 am
‘Providing a degree of competition sharpens the focus and moves them towards skill development. Particularly younger children (say <10 yrs) are easily distracted and competition brings focus. The only way to learn if you are “good” at something is to practice it hard enough to find out. If a person doesn’t want to be ‘good’ at something, that’s where open play is a viable option though I question how much kids would stick with it.’
Hooray for skill. 3 cheers for competition. It’s ****** ADULT coaches who cause the problem: determining winners and losers. My buddies and I fought hard in our teenage backyard basketball games and, thus, improved at and became fonder of the sport over the years- not a ****** ADULT in sight. As another writer noted above, children themselves, whose talents vary, do not suffer psychologically from losing fair and square to their peers- they’ll all be laughing about it afterward. It’s only when some ****** ADULT decides some should play rather than others that hurt settles in. Because here is precisely where the analogy with math class breaks down: coaches play favorites or put the needs of their Precious Program ahead of their players’. The bench-warmer is often bewildered as to why he’s not out there. Left to themselves, children, OTOH, are willing to let Nature run its athletic course. Not yet taught Greed, it’s all about Friendship with them. God bless him, KM, wasn’t much of a basketball player. But, Heaven forbid, he should leave my backyard unhappy. I limited myself to shooting long range. RFGA, Ph.D.
lurker 03.31.22 at 7:39 am
@Michael Cain, 22
I’ve seen this argument before and for me it fails because in PE there was never any attempt to teach me anything, I was supposed to know how to do everything already. In actual, real subjects, you were taught, in PE all I learned was to stay out of the way of the better players and kill time until the class was over.
Tm 03.31.22 at 9:17 pm
A statistic: in Germany there are about 90 000 sports clubs with about 28 million members, 30% of the population. I never belonged to those 30% and can’t say much from personal experience. My spouse and her whole family was active in a ski club when she was young, which she remembers very fondly, mainly the social and community activities. I suspect the degree to which individual clubs are geared toward competitiveness as opposed to having fun and socializing depends – on the people, the leaders, the coaches (usually volunteers), the kinds of sport.
https://www.goethe.de/de/m/kul/mol/20575864.html
J-D 04.01.22 at 12:57 am
To me it feels as if there’s an important distinction between being less competitive and not being competitive at all. If I am trying (or my team is trying) to get the ball into your goal (or your team’s goal), while you are (or your team is) trying to prevent us from doing so, then the activity is intrinsically and by definition competitive. It’s much more competitive if we keep track of how many goals are scored and bet money on it. The more money we bet, the more competitive it is; so if the money stakes are trivial (to the people staking them), then it’s less competitive–but it’s still competitive. If there’s no money staked at all, then it’s even less competitive–but it’s still competitive. If we don’t even keep track of the number of goals scored, then it’s even less competitive–but it’s still competitive.
There’s also variation in degrees of competitive spirit, what could be described as variation in the emotional stakes. Last night I sat down with some people I know to play Seven Wonders: Architects. Without confirmation, I would hazard a guess that some of us were more invested in winning and some less so; without confirmation, I would also hazard a guess that there are groups who play the same game with everybody having a much stronger desire to win than any of us had. Some groups and some players could be more competitive and some less so, but the game itself is an intrinsically competitive activity. Somebody might theoretically, I suppose, play the game non-competitively, perhaps by deliberately playing in a way that increased another player’s chances of winning or perhaps by playing at random without regard to the effect on the game’s outcome. I think this kind of behaviour would be regarded as against the spirit of the game and also as unwelcome in the group (‘unsporting’, perhaps, or something like that). If I don’t try to stop you from getting the ball and don’t try to stop you from scoring with it, then I’m not still playing the game, am I?
After that game, some of us played The Crew. That is by definition a cooperative game and so intrinsically non-competitive: the possible outcomes do not include ‘this player wins’ or ‘that player wins’ but only ‘all players win’ and ‘all players lose’. In that game, it would presumably be regarded as unwelcome and unsporting to play deliberately for an ‘all players lose’ outcome just to spite the others.
Some activities easily lend themselves to both cooperative and competitive ‘play’: solving jigsaw puzzles, for example (cooperative if participants work together to solve the same puzzle; competitive if participants each have a copy of the same puzzle and each is trying to complete it first).
I remain of the opinion that players who are trying to achieve the longest possible ‘rally’ with the equipment for a racket sport (like tennis or badminton) are doing something different from actually playing the game (I repeat, I’m not suggesting it’s an inferior activity, only that it’s a different one). If you change the objective you have changed the activity–just as, for example, a card game in which the object is to lose all the tricks is a different game from an otherwise similar one in which the object is to win all the tricks.
Colin Danby 04.01.22 at 1:20 am
#22 seems like a key question. Re other comments, I took a 9-year-old niece to weekend soccer games a few times and was shocked by the parents who turned up to yell constant streams of advice at their kids, during play — look behind you, pass, do this, do that. Is this just a U.S. phenomenon?
Tm 04.01.22 at 8:23 am
J-D 49: Sure certain activities are inherently competitive and others are not. But generally it’s a matter of degree. One can do the exact same activity, for example running or skiing, with various degrees of competitiveness or with none at all. An interesting question is what induces children to engage in more or less competitive behavior and the role societal pressures play in pushing them towards competitiveness.
Trader Joe 04.01.22 at 10:59 am
@49
Good observations. There is decidedly a line between playing an activity with competitive aspects vs. playing competitively where winning whatever it takes is the end in itself. Quite likely the root of why some people take to games and sport and others are turned off by them.
Salem 04.01.22 at 11:41 am
One thing missing from this discussion is the children who enjoy competition. As a child, like most of my classmates, I was intensely competitive, particularly around sports. Our playground games were played with just as much – maybe more – competitive attitude as the official, adult-organized ones, often spilling into being over-competitive. It was the children screaming at their teammate for misplacing a pass, and the adults saying “winning isn’t everything, include everyone.” The vast majority of us hated the non-competitive pseudo-sports the adults sometimes imposed on us, and they were never voluntarily played.
Is this experience universal? Surely not. This was an all-boys school, for one thing. And even in that experience, it didn’t apply to everyone. There were a few boys who disliked, to differing degrees, the competitive attitude to sports. I strongly disagree with commenters above who say this is because they weren’t “sporty.” They weren’t sporty, but that wasn’t the determining factor, because many of the competitive kids, including me, also weren’t sporty. It’s a question of personality and attitude, and indeed the non-competitive ones had a personality type that I would expect to be over-represented among CT commenters. So I agree with the commenters who are saying that we need to make more provision for children who don’t like competitive sports, but disagree with those saying we need to make them less competitive overall. There should be provision for everyone, and the notion that competition comes from the adults is far from universal. I have seen that dynamic, but it can just as easily be the other way around.
There is also another angle to this, which is the salutary effect of competition. As a child, I had contempt for the non-competitive kids, because (although I wouldn’t have put it in this language) I regarded them as engaging in ego-protection – “If I don’t try my utmost, I didn’t really get beaten.” As an adult, I’m much more relaxed about this kind of thing, because it’s a big world and I believe everyone can find their own place, so I don’t force my kids to engage in competition they don’t want to. But I do wonder if I was right as a child, and my current attitude is too hippyish. Refusing to compete because you aren’t any good isn’t really healthy. Adults do need to encourage children to overcome their inhibitions, develop and grow – in a balanced and respectful manner.
justme 04.01.22 at 9:04 pm
@Colin Danby #50
I don’t know if it’s a US thing in particular, but it drive me to distraction. I’ve gotten to the point where I can’t watch my kids game with the rest of the parents. I sort of wander around the field to stand near one of the corners or something, away from most of the parents.
The times when I’ve volunteered to coach, I have specifically held a meeting with the parents at the start of the season telling them what they can expect from me: (1) kids will be kept moving as much as possible, with a ball, during practice, rather than standing around listening to me talk, and (2) they won’t hear me say anything to kids on the field during games except “Good job”, “Nice pass”, etc. explaining that the game is the kids time, and part of the game is them learning how to manage as a group on their own.
I found that helped reduce the yelling from the sidelines from parents of my team’s kids, at least.
hix 04.02.22 at 3:20 am
“(now that I think of it, this must be the case in at least some Länder in Germany because when I showed up randomly at a club in spring in my then hometown and told them my time in the 100m Backstroke and Freestyle,”
More or less -think it is mainly generating Olympic medals that is heavily subsidiced. Swiming is quite good in that regard. Throwing a welcome party and canceling the fee does however not sound like they were aiming quite for that money. Financial offers to good players are not that uncommon even in the less TV audience geared non olympic sports, sometimes including lower leagues. Chess comes to mind, which has neither tv/fan money nor olympic subsidy money. Still, you had all those czech players in the early 90ths, because some rich guy thaught it would be cool to buy themself a top team for relativly cheap money. Come to think of it – i played quite horrible handball till arround 16 and some of my better teammates were already offered expensive shoes and the like to switch team in the second lowest league. And Football is just crazy anyway, way down to the lowest leagues just like to the lowest youth levels, no matter if it is money, ambition to gear all towards producing pros, or strange coaches and parents.
harry b 04.02.22 at 4:45 pm
I loved, and love, cricket, and would have really loved playing for a less competitive team. In fact, accidentally, my school year group team was outstanding: we won every single game 3 years in a row except when we played against Eton and Radley (the private schools essentially were semi-pro). I was a good part of a very good team. I think that on a team that took it less seriously I’d have been a better player because I wouldn’t have felt alienated from the team ethos. I hated the competitiveness. I wonder how common that is. It doesn’t really surprise me to find that people here identify with it.
After leaving school I played for a much less successful team, populated by a large number of Trotskyists and ex-Trotsksysts plus a CIA agent, and that was, for the most part, much more comfortable.
Dave Heasman 04.02.22 at 4:47 pm
@Colin Danby #50
Not just a US thing. In England they attack the ref. There’s a real shortage of referees because of violence in lower and junior leagues.
Suzanne 04.02.22 at 8:23 pm
@53:
“Refusing to compete because you aren’t any good isn’t really healthy. Adults do need to encourage children to overcome their inhibitions, develop and grow – in a balanced and respectful manner.”
Agreed – up to a point. I guess it depends on how much humiliation gets visited upon the kids who aren’t good and are made to play anyway (in a school setting). The other kids who are team captains pick you last, as I wrote above, and reading this thread has brought back unwelcome and vivid memories of those miserable softball at-bats, basketball games, etc. I believe that competition has its place in sports and can be healthy, but children need a little protection, sometimes from other children.
J-D 04.03.22 at 6:38 am
Armstrong and Miller did a sketch which suggests widespread recognition of the image of PE teachers as unsympathetic:
https://tinyurl.com/45u7pbf2
Saurs 04.03.22 at 9:30 am
Great commentary from justme in this thread, and a personal thank you for the Real Sports link, which was my first introduction to a systematic and highly conscious effort to protect children from adult-induced, toxic score-keeping and provide all children (regardless of interest, proficiency, promise) possible pathways forward, whether that manifests in a career as an amateur or professional, a lifelong “sportiness,” a love of competition and collaborative strategy for the sake of both/either, or just an interest in or appreciation for/knowledge of a world class sport.
The Norwegian model is a great (but admittedly difficult) one to emulate or adapt and adjust for ground conditions, particularly for countries, unlike Norway, where access to quality sport instruction and an opportunity to regularly play is strongly stratified by class, race, and gender and, like all social issues involving children and especially where public money and public spaces are involved, highly politicized.
J-D 04.03.22 at 10:08 am
Since nobody else has seemed interested in satisfying your curiosity, I will offer you my response.
The institutionalised educational system performs a range of functions, but there are two which are primary: one of these is dominant at the earliest stages, during the first years of schooling, and becomes progressively less important as the students age and progress through the system, while the other correspondingly becomes progressively more salient, but both of these two functions are forms of sorting and segregating. The earlier function is one of keeping students away from the adult world of employment (except, of course, for those adults employed in the system): schools mind children so that parents can go to work, and as this role becomes less important later, the system still restricts (to varying extents) the participation of students in employment. The other primary function is one of grading and ranking students in a way which provides some appearance of fairness to a result in which, for the most part, those of wealthy and otherwise privileged backgrounds get the most desired outcomes. Marking, grading, ranking, and rating students is not necessary for the function (which the system does also perform) of imparting instruction and improving performance (and more often than not is actually inimical to it): the people who taught me to drive had the object of improving my ability to do so to the point where I could pass the test for my licence, and the people who taught me to swim had the object simply of making me a better swimmer, and in neither case was I ever marked or graded. As far as I know, the people at the Spanish language school who taught my daughter Spanish also never saw a need to mark or grade her performance when the purpose was simply to improve her ability to communicate in Spanish.
I don’t expect that anybody will accept this response just because I offer it; I am well aware of how hotly it is contested. Also I don’t pretend that it is original to me; I am conscious of borrowing my ideas. The only reason I offer them is because you expressed your curiosity. If I have strayed too far afield from the original topic, I apologise.
TM 04.04.22 at 9:03 am
J-D 61 “Marking, grading, ranking, and rating students is not necessary for the function (which the system does also perform) of imparting instruction and improving performance (and more often than not is actually inimical to it)”
I agree but wit ha caveat. While rating and ranking students is totally irrelevant and may be detrimental to the goal of improving performance, there is usually a need for the instructor to appraise the student’s work in the sense of pointing out streangths, weaknesses and mistakes. This should seem obvious but I mention it because the two activities of grading and providing feedback are in the standard school system conflated. Sometimes even worse, the grading is the only feedback the student receives, without even a cursory appraisal of the work, thus depriving students of the opportunity to learn from their mistakes. This of course is done by overworked instructors to save time and effort but in my experience is a major problem in many educational institutions.
Otoh the need for critical feedback is sometimes underestimated by reform educators. One can and probably should give that feedback without grading and ranking but not providing it or pretending that “everybody has won and everybody should get a prize” is counterproductive and deprives students of the opportunity to learn from their mistakes.
Trader Joe 04.04.22 at 12:12 pm
@61 and @62
The environment you describe with respect to driving and swimming is in my mind more akin to coaching rather than teaching. Its perhaps semantics, but coaching in this context is more a 1×1 or small group exercise and accordingly attunes very well with sports, but also a range of individual skills such as language, music and various other arts.
By contrast, the modern construct of teaching is too often a post-industrial mass production product designed to move a cohort of students from age 5 to age 18 whilst imparting a smattering of knowledge, study habits and practical skills.
I wish teaching was more like coaching (as you describe) and in some settings it is. The Montressori schools come quite close as do a range of private and specialty schools. That said – public schools aren’t in that business (J-Ds description of the early part of education is closer to the pin in my view). They are accountable for public funds and accordingly must be measured – measured means grading, tests and metrics and accordingly a lot of hands on learning gets ground up in the gears.
Michael Sullivan 04.04.22 at 6:51 pm
I’ve thought about this a fair bit. I am moderately athletic (large, strong, good hand-eye coordination) and really enjoy competition. I hated organized sports as a child (born in late 60s for time reference). Why? Because they were an excuse for violence. Not for every kid, but for enough, and it was not taken seriously by adults. We were expected to “work it out” “learn how to stand up for ourselves” etc. I had fun playing soccer and road hockey and basketball with friends as a little kid when I was younger, but in school, there were always kids who used the physically access to do violence. Especially after moving and becoming the new kid in 7th grade, suddenly, I was getting assaulted all the time, not just by opponents, but by my own teammates in practice. So I quit soccer and basketball by 8th grade. I tried out for basketball in high school, but with my skills undeveloped, I didn’t make the team.
But my problem was never competitiveness, it was being the weirdo and being a pacifist — which was hard enough when it wasn’t combined with being the new kid. I realized later that if I’d just been willing to beat the shit out of a couple kids who desperately deserved it, things would have gotten a lot better. But the culture of sports among boys when I was growing up (new england in 70s and early 80s) was SO completely toxic, and you pretty much had to drink the koolaid to fit in for team sports.
When I got to my super hippie college, things were very different. I played basketball and ultimate frisbee, and LOVED it. These were “competitive” in the sense that we kept score, and cared about the outcome, and knew who was really good versus just getting by, but everybody played and practiced, and we weren’t any kind of serious about being competitive at the NCAA level, even div 3. it was a tiny school and we mostly played friendly matches. with high schools or clubs, and did shared practices with the women’s teams. Everyone was helpful, we competed hard, but it was obvious that we were all friendly. It felt like what sports were supposed to be when I read about them in all those young adult books but just never was in reality unless you were popular enough and very comfortable with the standard (toxic) male sports culture.
But then there’s another thing about being “competitive”. My wife tells a story about how competitive I am. When we met, I knew how to play darts, but wasn’t that good and hadn’t played much. She OTOH, thew regularly and if we played, she would win a lot more often than I did. Well, at one point I got a board, set it up in my house, and just started practicing 15-20 minutes a day. Read a few books about form and strategy, etc. and just plugged away. Didn’t take more than a year or so, and suddenly it was the other way around. I would almost always win. At that point, my wife stopped wanting to play with me. While I never liked losing and always tried hard to win, it never bothered me that she was better. And I feel the same way about any sport or game that I play. I love go, backgammon, racquetball, tennis, and I consider it a privilege to play against stronger players, even if it means I have little or no chance to win. But she had absolutely no desire to play against me, once it became clear that I was a significantly better player.
so there’s a way in which I’m much more “competitive”, in that I really enjoy the process of improving and am willing to put a lot of time and thought into getting as good as I can at something, whereas she mostly just wants to have some fun. OTOH, I’m also happy to play and lose every time as long as I feel like I’m learning something, whereas she is much more “competitive” in the sense that she hates losing and doesn’t want to play any game where she’s not close in skill or the superior player. And she gets very frustrated that if I ever take to game and really like it, eventually I’ll end up being better at it, because she’ll never want to do drills or study strategy in order to get better, and I totally will.
So which of us is more competitive? There’s a sense in which she is, because it’s very difficult for her to set aside the results in order to have fun while losing, or accept a handicap to make the game fair.
Finally another bit that seems related is an observation I made while learning to juggle. That is that the #1 talent/skill required to learn to do simple juggling (3 balls say) is a willingless to keep practicing while failing and looking stupid for quite some time.
Yes, I know people who picked up 3 ball juggling in 10 minutes, but for most of us, it requires a few hours or more of practice to get the timing right, during which there are a ton of dropped balls before we manage getting through a few rounds successfully, let alone to consistency and stability and the ability to add some flourishes and other tricks. I know a lot of people who are more physically gifted than I am, who have not learned and tried and gave up very quickly, despite progressing through the baby-steps leading up the real thing, faster than I did. but most people really hate looking stupid, and boy do you look stupid trying to juggle 3 balls and failing a lot.
As far as how I feel about sports for kids, I think people are very different, and there ought to be more understanding of that fact, and not insisting that everyone should fit a standard culture or mindset. I’m not sure that sports shouldn’t be competitive at all, but certainly a bit more forgiving, and accepting, at least below the “travel team” level. And far more non-competitive or cooperative options. More like what I experienced in college.
J-D 04.05.22 at 2:00 am
The modern codes of Association Football and Rugby Football unambiguously derive directly from public school football, but the more obscure earlier evidence tends to suggest that public school football in turn derived from village sports.
Tom 04.09.22 at 7:58 pm
Just wanted to say that OP is excellent and many comments as well.
Phil H 04.11.22 at 12:39 pm
These are just a bunch of scattered thoughts. I’m not sure if they add up to a coherent idea…
First, sports are inherently competitive. You can play in a non-competitive way, but it’s quite a fine balancing act to both try hard enough to make it fun and not care enough to squeeze out underperformers. It helps to have a competitive motivator like a match.
So, second, it’s not clear who non-competitive sports would be for. People who don’t like sport enough to just go and do it themselves, kicking a ball in the road; but who still like sport and want to do it in an organized way; but who don’t like the competitive element? I think that’s a very small portion of the population. I’m kinda in that portion, but I don’t see that we’re numerous enough to justify setting up lots of non-competitive competitions.
And third, wouldn’t more unstructured time be better? The proposal for non-competitive-but-organised sports just sounds like a way to sneak more organisation into children’s lives, when perhaps they need less.
Having read all my points, it seems that I do have a fairly definite point of view on this… I didn’t even realise that until I’d written them all out!
Colin Mathers 06.07.22 at 2:45 pm
You have described my attitude to competitive sport exactly. I hated it at school, and particularly the fake importance given to it. Assemblies devoted to praising the football team etc. I refused to participate, and would find a tree to stand behind when sent out to play cricket. I used to take some perverse delight in explaining that ball sports confronted me to strongly with the meaninglessness of life. But as soon as I left school, I got into bushwalking and rockclimbing. Later I got into various martial arts and ended up training for close to 30 years. In my older years, I’ve taken up strength training and its all about improving my performance (and health), competing against myself only.
My teenage son is currently having the same issues with Phys Ed at his school. Rebelling against playing football and getting into some trouble. He has taken up strength training and is taking it seriously. But the school banned him from using the weights in their gym, because he puts more weight on the bar than other inexperienced kids and that might cause them to copy him. He is quite pissed off as you can imagine.
Some people thrive on competition. Others thrive on self-improvement and hate competition. Its about time schools recognized and fostered physical activity for both types of people.