Can winning doesn't matter be carried too far?

This is an interesting situation.

On the one hand I can somewhat understand a coach who believes his team has very little chance of winning a tournament to use this year's participation to improved the girls' skills for next year's tournament.

On the other hand, there have been plenty of times that the underdog team, that no one gave much of a chance, has gone on to win a tournament, and probably the only person guaranteed to be with the team next year is the coach, so sacrificing any chance of this team's chances of winning for a better chance to win next year doesn't, to me, seem right.

Yes, a large part of the job of any coach who is involved with youth sports, is to teach the kids how to play, and at certain levels, under certain circumstances I think it's appropriate to potentially sacrifice the chance of winning to involve all the players on the team in the experience of the game. You are not describing such a level or such circumstances however.

Isn't winning games the purpose for individual players learning and improving their skills?

I suppose you could define "winning" in terms of individual performance (Player A scored X amount of points, Player B handed out X amount of assists, Player C had a really fun time), but a huge benefit of sports is the team experience: working together to achieve a common goal. The overall success of the team should be more important than how many points Player A scored or how much Player C enjoyed the experience.

Winning is the primary goal of any game. If not, the activity is merely physical exercise. We should be teaching our children to aim for and work towards achieving goals, and in sports there is the added benefit of having this lesson taught and realized in a team setting.

Interestingly enough, it doesn't seem like your daughter's coach is caught up in the "everyone should feel like a winner!" school of thought, and it appears that he is trying to improve the team's chance of winning, but if they are always playing older girls, and he is always substituting so the whole roster can improve, when does he intend to put this improvement towards it's logical end...winning?

Team play is not the place to work on individual development, that is what practice is for.

Age 10 and under there is more room in a game to work on skills rather than focusing on the health of the collective (strength of the team...AKA winning).

I think what you see here is Americas focus on the individual and disregard for the health of the collective. You also see America obsession with turning individuals into compliant victims/losers. Since we live in a global economy this is one of the dumbest ideas ever.

Do your best to protect your kids from the idiocy that others are trying to teach them.

BULLSHIT:

" Jasmine, that lay up in the third quarter was your best one ever! You are a WINNER!"

I promise you that in these cases normally most everyone gets a gold star.

Maybe but this team is very athletic and definately has the talent to win. They have won one tournament in which they played all girls at the same age and came in second in another. This past weekend they played 4 games - it was a tournament in which you play a certain number of games no championship. They won all 4 and they played both older girls and ones that are the same age.

It was good for the girls to win - you could tell it help boost them up. Now granted the older girl teams they played were not very good at all, but they did have competition at their age group and won only by a basket or two so it was close games.

My concern though wasn't about losing a game -- it was about losing all the games and feeling they could never win. And playing so much more above their age/ability that they were losing confidence in themselves.

I completely agree with this. One thing - they are not being taught to work as a team. The coach, basically coaches so many teams I think he is spread too thin - they don't practice many plays and often times practice with his one or more of his other teams. Most of the girls are very team oriented but have not been taught how to play as a team and there are a few that are what I call selfish players. Where instead of passing to an open team mate that would have a much easier shot will try to be the star resulting in turnover the ball - the team as a whole lacks disclipine. But there are some very good players that with more coaching as a team would work very well together.

Then there's no reason why they shouldn't be coached to win every game in which they play.

Really sounds like this guy is a lousy coach on numerous levels, but there's probably nothing you can do about that. Is getting her on another team or in another league possible?

(I assume you're not willing to run the coach down in the parking lot after practice)

Ha ha. Actually I know this coach somewhat. He is a good coach in that he is good at teaching kids and being positive. He is good at teaching skills. He seems to lack in teaching strategy - he kind of lets them work it out in a sense. He has spoken to particular girls (at least according to my daughter) about selfish plays - but you don't seem him teaching strategy and/or much around plays and being disclipined in playing them.

So we end up with girls that turn the ball over too much. That don't know how to run a play.

For the short -term she is learning some great skills - she lacked defensively before and her defense is now amazing so it definately has helped her. In the long run though if she wants to be very competitive we will change teams. And yes, she can get on another team - not at this time as the season is winding down - but we are thinking next spring, but will not change her unless we know it is a team she will stick with.

My opinion is - a good program to learn, but not necessarily for those that want to exceed and become outstanding players. But just my opinion - from what I can tell parents like him - those that don't want the kids to be overdriven, over competitive...those that have been turned off by coaches that are over the top competitive wise. I think though there is a good in between.

I really would love her travel coach to coach her at this level. He wants to have a team at this age group, just he says it is too much of a committment with other things he has. He may do a team in the future which is my hope.