SCORELESS SOCCER IS A LOSING GAME

Three cheers for Doug Bierzychudk, a teacher keeping his finger in the dyke of competitive sports. Bierzychudk retired last week after having taught physical education in Colorado for twenty-seven years. He’s had enough of participation trophies and ribbons for the school’s annual field day. He believes in competition and recognizing winners. He’s also the odd man out. The Denver Post spoke to eight Phys. Ed. teachers in four school districts. Bierzychudk was the only teacher to give out competitive awards.

Joe Deutsch, president of the Society of Health and Physical Educators, explained that in the past, “the focus in PE was on developing athletes or developing elite physical human beings…And that is not at all what field Day should be now…It’s fun competition now…we don’t have to give out ribbons and establish dominance.”

Most of what he said is nonsense. As a high school student, I played a lot of ping pong during PE. As a high school teacher, I saw PE close up. One semester I helped in the PE department where I played basketball with the boys one period a day. That was “fun competition” for the boys. No trophies in sight. Creating “elite physical human beings” has never been the purpose of Phys. Ed.

Mr. Deutsch’s language is the language of the left, where awarding ribbons to winners is elitist. Ribbons are not awarded to “establish dominance,” but to recognize the best in the field. Giving credit to Most Valuable Players recognizes excellence. The left does not like the fact – fact – that people are not equal in skills, attitudes, abilities, physical attributes and industriousness.

For decades, lovers of equality have attempted to take the scoring out of soccer so that none of the players lose self-esteem. The politically correct term is “non-result-oriented competition,” a phrase somewhere between oxy and moron. There is no such thing as competition without a result. That is, unless you live in a human behavior dreamworld.

According to the non-result-oriented crowd, when Team A scores ten goals while Team B scores zero, Team B won’t care because no one is keeping score. Of course, anyone with the brain of a soccer ball knows that although no one is keeping score, every eight-year-old on the field knows the “non score” is 10 to 0.

Social tinkerers are astonishingly naive. They believe they can change humanity’s competitive nature with a few tweaks. These are the same folks who gave their little boys dolls and little girls cap guns and were disillusioned to find the girls putting flowers in the barrels, and the boys blowing up the dolls with firecrackers. Social tinkerer Art Taylor, a psychologist and director of Sport in Society, suggested that athletics should be for building cooperative skills and self-esteem. He doesn’t like “elite teams” which he claims causes kids to become frustrated and quit early.

Social tinkerers take note: All of life is played for an outcome. Competition is not a cultural aberration. We are not competitive because our society has lost its way. We are competitive because we evolved in nature red in tooth and claw. Life is an arena; it can be no other way.

When my kids were very young, we played a game called “Fantasy Forest,” in which we raced around dragons and werewolves to get to the wizard’s castle. It would have been meaningless to play without a winner. Sometimes I won, other times I let them win. Allowing them to sometimes lose was not going to shatter their self-esteem. Winning every time would not be very interesting. Because they sometimes lost, the games were more fun and meaningful. They learned how to win and they learned how to lose.

When my kids grow-up, (actually, they did grow-up; this was originally published in a Colorado newspaper years ago) they will understand that potential lovers, employers and even friends will not make allowances for their self-esteem. They are going to be turned down for dates and jobs. Out in the real world, beyond the bubble of family, they are not going to find non-result-oriented dating or non-result-oriented college board scores.

Growing up in the Bronx, I never left home without a spaldeen. A soft, pink, versatile ball manufactured by Spalding. We kept score when playing off-the -point. We did not shoot marbles for “no keepsies.” We did not need social tinkerers telling us to play non-result-oriented football in the street.

Scoreless games are like spiceless food: bland and uninteresting. Those who seek to obliterate competition inhabit the same fairyland as educators who refuse to recognize valedictorians at graduation on the misguided thinking that the rest of the kids will feel envious or inadequate. It’s the mind-set that shudders with concern for the losers because the winners have established their “dominance.” Scoreless soccer advocates are attempting to establish equity in an unequal world.

These are the folks who push the relativistic attitude that all ideas have equal merit and judgmentalism is frowned upon. In the postmodern world of the woke there is no right or wrong, no winners or losers, no rich or poor, no absolutes, no morality, no thinking.

Self-esteem, happiness and general life-satisfaction do not spring spontaneously from an amorphous blob of inert humanity. They generate from personal accomplishment and crisply meeting challenges.

We live in a dynamic, innovative and entrepreneurial country in which competition, a cornerstone of capitalism, has laid the foundation for our living standard and our culture. Eliminate competition and you are left with the dull, drab, boring, iron-gray lifelessness of Marxism. Our job as adults is to prepare children for the real world not for a sterile utopia in which lethargic kids kick listlessly at soccer balls because there is no reason to get to the goal.

Getting to the goal is what life is all about.

SUBSTACK SIDEBAR – GO BIG RED

The other day at the annual Congressional baseball game, The Republicans crushed the Democrats 13 – 2 for their fifth consecutive win, mirroring, perhaps political realities. The game raised $2.75 million for charity. It was all in good fun because the competition on and off the field was real.