more idiotic school political correctness (1 Viewer)

[.]

From a blogger in Seattle:

Got an email from the head of Andrew's "baseball" league letting us know "games" start this week.

"As a reminder of our league rules for this level, no scores will be kept and all players will bat each inning, regardless of the number of outs made by the fielders. All players will play in the field. Coaches will pitch to batters, up to 5 or 6 pitches, with the hope that each child will be able to put the ball into play. There will be no walks and no strikeouts. If the batter is unable to hit the pitched balls, the player will hit off of a batting tee for that at bat. Games will last an hour, regardless of the number of innings played.

Safety is a priority, and there will be no on deck swinging of bats during a teammate's at bat. All players not on base or at bat should be in the dugout until it is their turn to come to the plate to hit. Please, no climbing of the fences. Coaches, please make sure that you have your safety kits and medical release forms with you at all practices and games, and report any injuries to me.

Why don't we just wrap them in protective bubble wrap and let them lay down in the outfield for an hour? That way nobody gets hurt and nobody goes home a loser, you know, just like in real life.

AndrewsDad

 

[TJ]

I understand but I am sure that level is 'Tee Ball' and the goal is to get them interested in team work....
Higher level leagues will not be like that...relax...and have fun w/ your child..

 

[r2]

Tee Ball has been played like this for a few years now... At first I was like, WTBeep!! Then it made sense after I saw what they are trying to achieve... Right or wrong, it is just the way it is... I've seen more kids crying during and after a ballgame than I ever remember when I was a kid... Not sure if something like this is cause for all the emotion I see... Maybe a lot more kids just don't like to lose now more so than in my day... Everything IS pretty much given to them nowadays... I see your point though Brent... But they are like 5 or 6...

 

[yoda]

Brent, tell em to buy a Jr. car... Pretty much cut and dried there- you win or you lose, and nobody can say otherwise...Unless they're named DimBulb..

 

[r2]

Tee Ball is played with a Tee and a Ball... The story states that the batter will get 5-6 pitches per at bat... So something must have changed from the old Tee Ball games... I do know that it is underhand slow pitch however... I think the person who wrote the story should have included the ages of the kids they are talking about...

 

[PJ]

The last 2 years I've been coaching 4-5 yrs olds in soccer, My kids were on the team and they needed a coach so I did it.

No score, no goalies. 3 on 3 just teach them the rules of the game type of deal. As a very competitive person the no score rule was hard to handle until after the first game. Just about every kid came to ask me the score, I tried the standard we'd played great and it was a tie....they weren't buying it. One kid spouts off that he knows we won by at least 4 (kid was right) I finally gave in told them.

I understand the sentiment behind the rule. At the youngest of ages just let them go out, learn and have fun. But in reality they all want to know who wins. I sometimes wonder if these rules aren't made for the parents who can't handle if their kid is not a superstar.

 

[Jimmy Hart]

As a sports writer I've done several stories on the evolution of little league rules. I think it's an incredibly interesting study how the sports has made such an investment in developing the right kind of future players, rather than the best players at their age.

The rules this league in question uses are designed to teach the maximum number of kids thew rules at the maximum number of fielding position and keep them involved for increased involvement at the next level. These rules are inhrently proven to meet those goals.

At the next level, you'll find more and more leagues insituting pitch count limits for the first ages of kid pitch. It's giving more kids the chance to pitch, reducing arm injuries and decreasing player burn out.

You have the right to criticize the rules if you're worried your 6-year-old is getting the life lesson that we all lose sometimes in life. However, if you want your kid to enjoy baseball and you want him to develop into the best player he can then give these rules a chance.

 

[Toejam]

That's what Happens when we allow these people control school boards. They have free rein to push any social agenda as they see fit!

 

[Professor Dave]

That's what Happens when we allow these people control school boards. They have free rein to push any social agenda as they see fit!

When I was a kid, we played most of our sports in pick-up games. That is, adults had ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO with the games we played. In the spring and the summertime we played baseball at least once a day, in the fall it was football in the afternoon (and it was really fun playing in the mud on rainy days), and then in the winter basketball. As I see it (and I could be wrong), a problem is that today parents don't let kids be kids often enough. Too many of the activities that kids are involved in are organized by adults and not by the kids themselves. If the kids organized the game, you know they would keep score so they'd figured out who won. And you can be damn sure they would either help those who aren't very good at an activity get better or figure out a way to deal with their friends who aren't very good. I know that for a fact, because I stunk at baseball and yet my friends made sure I played every day and they figured out a way for me to help the team. I bet their parents would never have gone to the same effort to help me be a better player that they did.

 

[mick]

don't know the absolute answers here either, but i'll relate my experiences.
when my oldest boy started playing 2nd grade basketball back in '93 or '94,
i don't think they started playing games till 3rd grade, i don't remember ever
seeing 'no scoring', it was always scored; close or blowout.
now my youngest son (12) just finished 6th grade b-ball a month ago. now
they've instituted a rule; 20 pt. lead = turn off score board.
I can understand no scoring in 3rd and maybe even 4th grade (any sport),
but in this day and age, it's dog eat dog and 2nd place = 1st loser.
You have to give these kids, even at young ages, something to measure
themselves against; not to mention competition is healthy and most people
compete in some form or another their entire life.
My kid's team was 23-8 this year, played 5 tournaments in feb. & march.
three 2nd's, one 1st, and one last place. The last place finish was by
far the hardest tourny we played, in fact we lost by 16 in the 1st round
to the team that ended up winning the tourny, but we were down by 25
at one point in game. no scoreboards were turned off though.
i was glad for that.
do you want to play the game or be a bench warmer?

 

[Toejam]

Anyone hear about that College Prof. who wants Dodgeball banned because it taeches kids to become targets?

 

[stanman]

.... As I see it (and I could be wrong), a problem is that today parents don't let kids be kids often enough. Too many of the activities that kids are involved in are organized by adults and not by the kids themselves. ...

Dave,

You hit the nail on the head! They are called "helicopter parents", because they hover over their kids's lives. This issue goes way beyond sports and it's raising generations of kids that don't know how to cope with each other without adult supervision, not to mention the general day to day issues.

In my opinion, the way sports are organized and played at the youth level is part of the decay of our society. Everyone is a winner, there are no losers, everyone gets to play no matter their skill level... where in this philosophy is there is any sense of accomplishment or drive to become better or succeed?

The changes to youth sports has totally eliminated the life lessons that sports taught most of us over a certain age.

 

[TJ]

Where we live it's just like when I grew up. Municipal sports programs have try-outs and winners/losers. Only first-place receives trophies and not everyone plays.. and kids are out playing until the sun goes down.
Teenagers even have paper routes and most parents let their children live.
I think it's the bigger cities w/ local news portraying negativity that get parents paranoid. TV news is terrorism to some degree...this could happen to you, etc.. and is making society scared...

 

[Professor Dave]

Anyone hear about that College Prof. who wants Dodgeball banned because it taeches kids to become targets?

I'm a college prof and I loved playing Dodgeball.

 

[.]

Baseball League Follow Up

For whatever reason, my post about Andrew’s Little League baseball game rules seemed to have hit a nerve. Orbusmax picked it up. Sytman and Boze of KTTH mentioned it on air. It was posted on Hannity.com.

So for those who were wondering… the age range is 6-8. Most of the kids seem to be in 1st grade. Now I started playing baseball when I was no older than 8. We did not have tee ball or coach pitch or any of that stuff. 6 inning games, 3 outs per side, 3 strikes, 4 balls, all the rules applied. One of the only exceptions was a 6 run limit per inning.

The first day of practice, the coach asked how many of the kids had played before. Most of the hands went up. I knew that might not be the case though when a number of those same kids needed to be told which hand the mitt goes on. Somewhere along the line I was roped into helping coach. It has been fun watching the improvement and it has been substantial. But the reality is some of these kids are really, really bad and will never ever be anything other than really bad. I am not sure what the point is in encouraging a kid who simply lacks the basic skills to play the game.

My non insane brother in law emailed me the other day saying his 4 year old was starting tee ball this week. Now I can see these rules applied to 4 and 5 year olds, maybe even 6 year olds but once you start reaching 7 and above, some of them seem a little much. Letting all the kids bat, OK, fine. Coach pitch, sure I have to be at work the next morning. Having them hit off of a tee? Not so much. If anything isn’t that going to make the kid stand out as the loser kid who had to hit the ball off of the tee? Not counting outs? The chance that the team in the field is going to successfully catch a pop fly or throw the runner out at first, 3 times in an inning… Einstein could not calculate those odds. Why not reward the team that can accomplish that?

This last fall I was an assistant coach for Andrew’s 7 and under coed soccer team. Now since I know almost nothing about soccer, my official responsibility was to remind the kids which goal was ours. One game day, I got to the field and our head coach, Dan, walks up to me before the game and with a big smile on his face and says “The other team looks really small”. Sure enough, our mostly 6 and 7 year olds were obviously older than the other team. Now just like in baseball, nobody officially keeps score in U7 soccer except for all of the kids and the Dads, Mom’s, maybe not. About 2 minutes into the game, we had a sizable lead and you could tell our kids were pulling back and passing the ball around when they could have walked right in for another score. After the “game” I asked Coach Dan what he thought the final score was. We both agreed that it was 40 something to maybe 4. Two weeks later we are playing a team that must have missed the coed description of the league and I later learned had been together the previous 2 years. We ended up losing a close game right at the end. Later that day I was getting my haircut. The lady that cuts my hair is very nice, does a quality job but is typical Seattle liberal. I was telling her about the two games and she said I am sure the kids appreciated the more competitive game a lot more. I explained to her no, it was clear that they all seemed to enjoy winning and scoring lots and lots of goals substantially more. It reminded me of an old saying, “While you may learn more from losing, I do not want to be the smartest person in the world”.

First game is Thursday evening. I will make sure to post the unofficial score.

AndrewsDad

 

[willy]

I look at this as an introduction to the game. I see no problem with organizing for 6-8 yr olds. If they pick it up..they'll be prepared for the next level.

I don't see what all the stink is.

We didn't have T Ball when I was a kid. Organized leagues didn't start until 10-11. We learned the game in gym class in elementary school. But we know how that's going now.

 

[BF]

This thread brings back a lot of memories. Both my son and daughter and played baseball and softball. I was an assisant coach at every level for my son while my wife was the manager of my daughter's teams. My son played 2 years of T-ball and 2 years of coach pitch before the kids pitched themselves. The score was always kept at every level. I learned a lot from those kids. One: you can't tell from T-ball how good a player might be when he"s older. Two: the disappointment of losing lasts about as long as it takes to get to the snow-cone stand after the game. Three: parents who take it too seriously can ruin it for everybody.

 

[Paul Berglund]

My daughter is 7 and is now playing softball teeball for the first time...and it is sort of the same as this. Everyone hits and runs the bases and they don't keep track of the outs. The kids have a lot of fun and they even learn too. They are all getting better all the time.
Okay now let me tell you about my Little League days. I started playing when I was eight. For the first two years I played, my two uncles (Dad's younger brothers) were my coaches. And lemme tell ya, they were pri*** with a capital P!! When we did drills we always ran laps, got yelled at at the games and in practice, and there was no desension in the ranks! Everyone of my buddies on that team couldn't stand my uncles and really let me know it. But I will tell you what...we really learned the game and became good players. Just about everyone that played on those two teams ended up being a great ballplayer and made All-Stars in 12 yr old ball. We also ended up winning the State Championship as 12 yr olds. So it did turn out good in the end.
Things are different these days with kids...the stuff my uncles did back then would NEVER fly these days!! I love my uncles, but they are still asses!! HEHE

 

[Nitrohaulic]

I think it's obvious that even these kids understand that the basis of sports is COMPETITION. I won't make a blanket statement and say that all in favor of these scoreless COMPETITIONS are liberal softies who think losing is bad.

 

[Kelly Raquipiso]

Anyone hear about that College Prof. who wants Dodgeball banned because it taeches kids to become targets?

I thought the point of dodgeball was to NOT be a target? All those games on the playground and in gym class played bass-ackwards. This explains why I am so confused. Wonder if I can sue the school board