Perceptions on Competition

 

How important is winning?

 I sell sporting goods to high school and youth teams in the area. I’ve always loved sports and competition so being a small part of it is exciting to me, even if it’s just taking orders and picking colors. Youth football has waned a little in popularity over the last 7 or 8 years. My best guess is the concussion scares from the NFL. It’s a real thing of course, football is a rough sport but girls soccer is far more dangerous where head trauma is concerned. But football has always been a target for ‘Karens’ in multiple industries. Close to 20 years ago I listened to an interview with a doctor that wanted it banned. Baseball is largely spared this kind of shame. But this isn’t a diatribe on football’s unfair critics.

I’ve been thinking more about competition and what it looks like in American culture.

We live with two distinct realities on competition; one says winning is everything and second place is for the first place loser. Two, says winning should be deemphasized because it’s unfair to the losers; better to hand out trophies so no one gets their feelings hurt. We understand the danger with both theories but they actually lead to the same result, watered down victories.

The problem isn’t soft parents who are afraid to let their kids fail, It’s that the separation between the two camps is stark and causing a deficit in the middle. Middle range talent gets squeezed between the highly skilled and the rec groups. Nothing is wrong with trying to be on the best team or build the best teams, but we give up too quickly on leagues where we haven’t had success. Getting beat in your current class? Jump down a class and get your trophy. This is true across high school, college and travel ball. Competition is the victim when winning is everything.

Winning is the inherent goal of every season, but the talent might be too rough. Let’s face it only one team is going to win the championship, does that mean everyone else is a failure?

When you subdivide teams and leagues and players to ensure a winning season it waters down the efforts and discipline necessary to get better. You can find a league with marginal talent and win it with superior players. But do you really need a championship that bad--to go beat everyone to the point of humiliation? If you’ve ever been a part of men’s basketball league where one team is loaded with a former Division I athletes you know how frustrating it is. Good for them I guess, but do they feel like champions?

Both extreme views on competition reduce the value of it by spreading out the amount of ways there are to win. Start your own tournament with 35 subcategories and try to win one. Or better yet, if you’re a marginal talent as a man, join a women’s league and pretend to be a woman. You don’t even need to do the surgery! Just tell people you’re confused. No they won’t think you’re crazy, well some will. A significant number will tell you how brave you are and best of all, you’ll win a lot more!

I think the key is to focus less on winning and more on personal improvement and overcoming challenges. The teams that win long term (again with baseball) are the kids that stay together and learn how to play together. I helped a coach get uniforms and equipment one year. Near the end of the season he came in to pick up some baseballs. I asked him how the kids were playing and said they were starting to get it. “It’s fun when the kids start to figure it out” he said. He seemed content with their progress. I’m sure they started winning more but his focus was on their improvement and learning the game. Their minds slowly absorbed the principles and it came through in the performance. They’ll remember what it was like to make progress and rely on each other.

I don’t begrudge talented kids from playing with other talented kids in the same group. But I worry that winning is so important that we discount the great experiences of competition by chasing rings, trophies, awards. We leave teams where there is little chance of winning, even if our contribution would mean more.

But then again, I’m just a salesman .