Fred Bowen's "The Score" column,
February 5, 2009, Washington Post

Sometimes Winning Big Is a Great Loss

Two girls' high school basketball teams played a game last month that was not as close and exciting as Sunday's Super Bowl.

The Covenant School, a private school in Dallas, Texas, defeated Dallas Academy, 100-0. That's right, 100-0.

The newspaper accounts indicated Covenant led 59-0 at halftime. At least one fan who attended the game said the Covenant team kept pressuring their opponents and shooting three-pointers until just a few minutes remained in the game. The Covenant fans and even their coaches cheered until their team reached the 100-point mark.

To their credit, the girls from Dallas Academy did not give up. They kept playing hard but could only manage a few shots at the basket. Dallas Academy is a small school that specializes in helping kids with learning disabilities. Their girls' basketball team has not won a game in four seasons.

The score was so lopsided that the headmaster of the Covenant School, Kyle Queal, apologized later, saying, "It is shameful and an embarrassment that this happened." Covenant even tried to forfeit the game, saying, "A victory without honor is a great loss."

But the Covenant coach, Micah Grimes, would not apologize. Grimes said, "We played the game as it was meant to be played." So the Covenant School fired Grimes.

It seems to me that the Covenant coach and some of the team's fans forgot that the real test of an athlete or a team is not how they perform against the weakest opponents, but how they perform against the best.

John Wooden, whose UCLA teams won a record 10 NCAA championships, said that the true indication of competitive greatness was to "be at your best when your best is needed."

Every year there are games in kids' recreational or school sports where the teams are so unevenly matched that one team crushes the other. As a longtime coach, I never felt right telling my team not to score. After all, a blowout game may give a kid who never scores the chance to put one in the basket. And everyone likes to score.

But in lopsided kids' games, there always should be a "mercy rule." For example, in high school basketball, if one team is ahead by 40 points, the game should be over and the leading team should be declared the winner.

A mercy rule would encourage the coach of the better team to put in the bench warmers earlier in the game and to order the team to pass more or to stop pressing.

Kids' sports should be competitive and fun. And I'll admit winning is part of the fun. But beating a badly overmatched team by 100 points is not a real win.

Fred Bowen writes KidsPost's sports opinion column and is an author of sports novels for kids. To listen to Fred Bowen talk about writing, go to http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/library/bookcast.

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