Ethics in kids’ team sports an oxymoron?

My daughter just finished her first experience in a kid’s city league sports team. She played team sports with her school which promotes good sportsmanship. But this league is different. Her school team is mixed boys and girls; the city league is all girls. She loves basketball and is very good. She wanted to play with girls as even though she is as good as and better than some of the boys, well you know boys.

The league has 4 in-house teams of 3rd and 4th graders and a travel team for the better and more serious players. My daughter played on both. On the in-house league she ended up on the “Charlie Brown” team. There were only 2 girls on her team that knew how to play and all were smaller sized players. Another team was made up of all (except 3) tall girls and one of the smaller girls was incredible. Whenever any team played against this stacked team, they got creamed. Last week was the final regular season game. My daughter’s team got creamed 48 " 10. It was horrible for the girls especially since many of the parents on the other team where screaming various things encouraging them to push up the score even higher. My daughter played her heart out until the end scoring her team’s last basket in the last period.

I felt like crying because it seemed so hard for these girls who played with such heart and how unfair that they stacked up one team intentionally " the coaches are the only “adult” coaches for this age group. My daughter has a high school girl (who most times does not come to practices or games). At the end, I spoke to my daughterabout the positives " how much she learned and how much her game improved.

My husband and another coaches the travel team (and some other unethical stuff happened here as well) and he doesn’t want to finish this up. The other coach on the travel team is a coach of the “stacked” team.

We do not like the idea of quitting once you start something? But what is the better ethic? Keeping up with an obligation or keeping up with something you don’t believe in?

There is much more, but this is long enough as it is.