My son is also on this “stacked” youth league basketball team. This is his first year playing basketball-aside from the instructional year they have when they are younger. My son shows up to his 2 weekly 2 hour long practices ready and eager to learn and improve his skills. Aside from that, he is outside practicing basketball at our house EVERY SINGLE DAY after school because he has a drive to play better and win! He loves basketball! And he is good at it! All of his dedication and hard work should not be shamed and made out to be bullying, man handling, or unsportsmanlike.
Yes, our boys beat the team that is so upset 43-0. So what? If your philosophy is that the sports should be for “fun” why are you so concerned about the score of the game anyway? As mentioned before in another post, we played a Mitchell County team that consisted almost entirely of travel ball players earlier this season. The Mitchell County team absolutely CRUSHED us. And guess what? Our boys were upset that they lost BUT they took this loss as motivation to do better, work harder, and win more games, just as they should handled it! And luckily they have amazing coaches to support them in this. Our boys would never expect an opposing team to go easy on them and allow them to score a few points for the sake of their feelings. No one should ever expect that from a sports team! And honestly, I don’t think the boys would want that. They want to EARN their wins. Not to mention, the parents and coaches on our team didn’t go crying on the internet about how unfair it was that our boys lost so badly. It happens! Whining on a public forum “the coaches of this team should allow the other team to score a single goal out of compassion” is ridiculous. Why should we have to teach our boys that their hard work should be set aside for the feelings of another team, just because they aren’t playing as good? Do you really think as these children get older and begin to play for our middle and high schools that this is going to be how other coaches would handle a situation like this? Absolutely not!! Like, you really think MHHS varsity would let Mitchell score a couple points because they are so behind in points? NO. And I get these are kids, but shouldn’t they learn these lessons now to take with them throughout their sports journeys?
And again, I think it should be noted that NONE, NOT ONE SINGLE BOY on our team plays travel basketball. There is no “stacking” going on as previously claimed. So I feel one should have their facts straight before trying to make a really good, competitive basketball team and their coaches look bad just because your feelings are hurt about the score of a game. I understand that losing so badly is not a good feeling for the losing team to have (we were in the same boat earlier this season to an ACTUAL travel ball team) but they shouldn’t be taught that they should be given leniency and shown compassion where it is not due because life does not work that way!
Our boys love the sport and have worked extremely hard all season. They’re a good team with good coaches. They deserve every win they get because they have worked their butts off for it! And if they lose a game, they will learn from that and work even harder for that W at the next game.
