Sportsmanship

Tanner, my middle son, had his first basketball game the other night. He's never played before, and he was the last player to make the team. But he learned early on that working hard is the easiest way to make a team, and he did indeed work hard. He doesn't have the skill set yet, but he's got the determination.

So, they played a very weak team. And I do mean weak; by the end of the first quarter, they were up by about 30-5. The final score was 75-22; the coach didn't deliberately run up the score, which is good. He even instructed the starting players to stop taking easy lay-ups and shoot from the outside.

He also made sure that every player got a moment. In the third quarter, there were only two players on the team who hadn't scored. One of them was my son. So, when they were on the floor, the coach instructed the other players to feed them the ball as much as possible to give them a chance to score that basket. It was made easier by the fact that the other team didn't really grasp the concept of 'defense' for most of the game; there were a lot of wide-open shots for everyone.

Anyway, Tanner's friend was the other player who hadn't yet scored, and he got several opportunities before he finally got that first basket (he got two more in the game as well). Then, it was Tanner's turn. He got a couple of chances that were "just a bit outside" (a Major League reference for those in the know). But on the third try, he got the ball on a long down-court pass, and got the layup to drop. I cheered as loud as if I'd just watched the Montreal Canadiens score a game-seven overtime goal.

His teammates congratulated him, and he got to stay on the court to finish the game. He was hustling the whole time, and it showed. On defense, the player he was guarding never touched the ball until the last play of the game...and Tanner stole the ball and headed down-court. The final buzzer went off before he could shoot, but it was still a great effort.

As I said, the coach didn't run up the score; the talent difference was just that big that even with the starters spending most of the second half on the bench, they were dominant. I contrast that with Tanner's first experience with flag football from before we moved. On that team, the coach seemed to think he was coaching the 2007 Patriots, running up the score and keeping his best players on the field for almost the entire game, while the younger and smaller players got maybe half a quarter of playing time all day. We quit that team halfway through the season, since it was obvious that the only people enjoying themselves were the coach and the stars.

Sportsmanship matters; sure, it's great to win a trophy as a kid playing on a team, but it's not nearly as impressive if you didn't make any real contribution to the team. In 4 eight-minute quarters, Tanner got nearly fifteen minutes of playing time, almost half the game. That means a lot to a twelve-year-old, much more than having him sit on the bench for all but three minutes and telling him that cheering on the rest of the team counts as playing time.

More importantly, the other team didn't walk off the floor looking like German POWs from the siege of Stalingrad. Yes, they lost, but they didn't get utterly crushed and humiliated. I'm not exaggerating when I say that Tanner's team could have won by a hundred points. 75 may seem pretty high for a game that short, but it could easily have been a lot worse. Kudos to the coach for spreading the playing time around as well as he did, and giving every kid that moment on the scoreboard.