to be fed up with 'Non-Competitive' sports events?

[pointydog]

It is beyond a joke.

dd2 was at a hockey tournament today. The team had a pre-tournament pep talk where they were told not to cheer if their team scored a goal and not to make any aggrieved noise if a team mate cocked up.

The teams were not told the final score at the end of a match and there was no winner.

This is all part of teaching 'Sportsmanship'. What bollox.

Just agreeing with the people who've said sportsmanship is about competing fairly,learning to win without being horrible about it,and coping with losing.Those are really important things to learn...even if the adult world doesn't always manage them...
And I'm another non-sporty type(next to last in all running,always)and it didn't bother me,I knew there were things I was good at,but it would've been different if either the school or my parents had been obsessive about winning,instead of about trying.So I guess I think competition is good,but not that winning is the be all and end all..

I went to DDs sports day this morning.

Am very pleased that her nursery have a competitive nature.

Even the nursery class (3 and 4 yr olds) have competitive races.

All the children have 3 races, straight sprint, ball/bat or egg spoon race and 1 mixed race (run to bean bag, run back, jump through hop/ run back type thing.

The 1st three places all get medals. The children are all mixed ability, sometime 1 child got 3 medals but more often with the mixture of races it meant that different skills were used (not just pure speed).

DD loved it - last year had no medals, this year 2 2nd place medals. Everyone claps for all, cheers all on.

Luckily we don't have parent races so doesn't get too competitive.

I meant her school not nursery...

I think CMOT's post is good. Competition isn't necessarily bad, but children shouldn't be forced to compete publically if they don't want to in events like sports days. While as many of you say academic subjects can be competitive, you don't have to do them in public while people offer patronising cheers as you crawl home last.

This is total madness. Have seen it at my school too - my 8 yr old DS ran in a relay race last year, but each team rang on their own so they had no-one to race against!Completely barmy. And I wasn't even allowed to cheer his name in case the children whose parents were not there felt left out.

We applaud the excellent reader who finishes their speech.

We cheer and laugh at the sharp quip made by an excellent speaker.

We clap at the excellent factual, historical and scientific detail that some keep and gain.

We encourage children to accept they have strengths and weaknesses. That is unkind to point out blatently, weaknesses in any area.

We should teach sportmanship and cheer the performing sportsman.

Everyone has a strength.

Actually, DSs school doesn't do awards for academic achievement either. They are, obviously, setted for ability in maths and english but there are no things like "best speller" awards or "maths champ" stuff. Sports day in KS1 is a no competitive "activity afternoon" and in KS2 seems to involve a set of sprint races that the parents can watch and something else which the parents don't watch. The sprint races are graded so that the slow children aren't racing against the fast ones. Obviously they are aware that they are slow but at least they won't finish 5 minutes behind the others I'm happy with this set up.

I do not remember any academic awards being given out when I was at primary school either. Sports day was a team affair although races were individual, you were competing for your House. With hindsight, I suspect races were carefully staged so that even the slower children didn't stand out as being appalling - either that or we didn't notice. I do remember being continually disappointed that, because I couldn't swim, I didn't get a ribbon handed out in assembly for completing distances in the school pool. That's stuck with me for more years than I care to mention so I do see the point of non-competitive stuff.

It makes me worry about the intellect and mindset of the person/people who make up that kind of ruling and who actually think it makes sense.

In secondary school I was once entered into a swimming race because although not everybody had to compete (you could be a reserve, natch) the person picking entrants for our class didn't believe me when I told her just how bad I was. Consequently one lap into the two lap race everybody else had already finished and I was struggling on on my own, it would have been really awful and direly embarrassing if I hadn't been cheered on the whole way by everybody watching. If I had had to keep going faced by a silent crowd I would have got out the pool and given up. Alright, so I came last by a long way - but at least other people's sportsmanship made me proud of finishing. It also helped me be more honest and less embarrassed about the fact that I am just a bad swimmer, and there's no badness in that IMO.

Surely children must learn how to deal with losing, and the fact that it's hard to be the best at anything (i.e. I might be the fastest runner at my school, but when the county trials come up, I'm not the fastest any more) - that it's a big competitive world out there and you have to figure out how to deal with that. Starting with the u5 sack race!!

I think my dd1 is a little over competitive tho - she was really rooting for me to win the local race for life, and really didn't get the "it's about the taking part". She loved the medal...

I think if this is going to be the general attitude of the country, it would be wrong of us to host the olypmics.

YANBU -I agree there should be some competition...
I was always last at sport's day -(except for the sack race which I even won
one year and I'm still proud!)...and it didn't scar me for life.

I think DD1's state school has it right - each class is split into around 3 groups...so there are 3 1st, 2nd and 3rds for each race in every class. They split the classes really well ... all the children seem to be pretty evenly matched in each group (no-one is obviously trailing at the back or winning every race)...they do 'serious' running races but also fun things like egg and spoon and hoop skipping (brilliant - gives the ones with shorter legs an advantage over the longer leg ones who normally win the running races)

I think the local private school is a bit too competitive though ...just learned that an 8 yo will not be allowed to take part in any races at their ('very athletic') sport's day because their 'times' will not be good enough...

YANBU. Some competition is good and healthy as long as it doesn't dominate. We live in New Zealand, and pretty much from early primary school there is competitive sport, whether at club level or at school year level, and the really good runners / swimmers etc are celebrated at least in my kids' primary school, which I think is great (and no, my kids aren't among them!) Most kids that I have seen seem to be very accepting that some of their mates are fantastic runners / swimmers etc and cheer them on at inter-school events, not only that but try very hard to join them. It's a good attitude and IMHO, better than that of some of the parents :-)

And a club experience: Last summer all 3 DCs joined the local athletics club for a bit of fun and a run around for an hour once a week. They loved it and had lots of fun with their friends. They enjoy sport, and give it a good go. However my DH nearly fell over backwards when he realised they were quite competitive, as at each event they recognised the top three placegetters! He then realised how serious it could get!!

No cheering? Not being told the score? This is madness! I'm all in favour of encouraging everyone to take part and not doing that horrible 70s thing of being nasty to every child who isn't gifted and talented at hockey or netball, but really this is going far too far! At a hockey tournament, too, where presumably all the children are quite keen, rather than a school PE lesson?

I agree with the OP.

If I wanted non-competitive sport I would go and watch Manchester United.