Non Competative Sports Days. I hate them

[castrolgtx]

Everyday the same children come out of school with certificates for good writing/reading/maths etc, but sports day can't be competative in case children are upset when they loose.
At the mum of two sports mad sons it drives me mad as it's their one chance to shine.
Anyone else agree?

nowerdays I go to the gym, where the only person I compete against is myself.

I loathed those days with a passion.

I have to fight with ,yself to be positive about them for the kids. I win, but it is quite a fight.

I'm just deeply relieved that my life now cosists of challenges that I set myself, rather than ones imposed on my that I know that I cannot win.

FWIW, when I teach a child who struggles at science, I remind myself of sports day. It make me more compassionate and understanding.

It is just so shit to be the last person picked

what a crock of 'lilac' flower growing turd.

egg n spoon aces are evil becuase its tantermount to rottweiler baiting.

what cos little cherub gets upset when they dont win.

hard shit says i. good sportmanship says i, everyone has different skills says i.

maths whizxzes get to show their talent by being better than others

as do spellings
as do all other shit

why cant it be that people who run faster can win a race against mere gangly or fat mortles and get the same pleasure speccy gets as he wins the maths ?

Fillyjonk - thank you. I totally agree with you. Non-compulsory competitive sports day would be great for me. I'd go along and cheer on DS's class mates, just like I cheer for England when we win. It's just not fair to make children take part when they know they are going to lose.

desederata, didyou spot the bit in my post where I said I undetstood that they were good for the sporty child?

No one is disputing that.

It si just that you can do that without humiliating the non sporty.

Imagine a reading lesson where the best readers got to pick the reading teams. Do you think, for one nanosecond, that the poor readers would be allowed to be humiliated in that way, in front of all their classmates? No, me neither.

But it happens in sports day

Aloha it seems you are pushing your hatred of sport onto your kids. If my son was last in a race I would not deem that to be humiliating, same as if he was on the lowest reading level in his class.

Your whole judgemnt on this matter seeems to be clouded in my opinion. To have such a hatred for sports people and winning is devoid of any logic.

Watch that chip on your shoulder doesn't poke your eye out.

I loved summer sports day. I never won a single race and I don't think I even came in second but I loved it.

I think the argument that we don't do it as adults is spurious. Not many of us indulge in Trigonometry either but it was still compulsory in my day.

Little enough emphasis is put on physical education. There are fantastic life lessons to be learned from competition even if you just learn that you're not keen on being competative.

hey bit aloha you cant eb chuffed ds is good at reaading onone thread then be nanoyed others may be good at runnign on another!

I went to DD's sports day today which was a good middle ground I think.

Firstly, they run for house points so in each race all of the house cheer for the person from their house - all the way to the finish line!

Secondly, last week they all had to nominate themselves for two races in two categories - fun and serious. So they could opt for 2 fun, 2 serious or 1 fun and 1 serious. All carried the same house points. The fun ones were egg and ball, clothes change relay, bean bag between the legs etc. All of these were run in relay, so that the team working together was what mattered. Serious one's were the more trad running races/relays.

There were no overall winners as such, just a winning house.

It meant that children who were good at sport could compete, those who weren;t were part of a fun race. Every single child was cheered at the top of their voices by their house and all of them were grinning from ear to ear

The parents race was a clothes change relay - which was much funnier than watching 40 year old past sporting heros make tits of themselves

picking teamsIN PE thats different. well we certainly had no picking of teams on sportsdays - it was by form or house.

i do think that rhubarb and i being left until the last at netball EVERY PE lesson was CRUEL

Custy fantastic post as always

You should have been in my school, custym you could have looked down on me

Aloha, it's probably true. I'm sure the constantpave ment pounding does something terrible to brain cells.

i have NO Idea how they work out psorts day result
or what the reulsts are tbh

our shool VERY cool tho

Lovely post Northerner. I'll cherish it.
I'm not annoyed that anyone is good at running. I just don't see why they have to be good at the expense of anyone else. I couldn't give a fuck what other children's reading is like. I don't like setting children against each other. I don't think it's nice.

Dh used to race at county level, my Uncle trained olympic swimmers, and a good few rellies play rugby

doesn't mean the kids will be any good though- ds1 is fab at athletics and swimming but has to attend SN team sport sessins (which he does on a Saturday) as he cant do temas very well and I love that he is developing skills as a result. Ds2 and ds3 take after me- absolutely useless at sports. Couldn't swim until I was ten despite regular lessons, couldn't throw a ball straight- and that hurt, I wanted to be good but i couldn't Funnily enough i'm now fir and can run further and faster than ever I could as a youngster- because I get lots of real time exercise (walking up hill to Uni, chasing carnival carts etc)

So I totallya gree with all that said the answer is to make it non-compulsory. And make sure non-competitive options are available too.

Well, you don't have be a genius to work out who's come last in a race, I think.

when i was in school, reading aloud in class was common, as were presentations. these flagged up people who had poor reading or oral skills.

do schools still have end of term prizes? cos that's competitive. there's no end of coverage about the amount of academic testing that kids today are subject to. don't try to tell me kids don't compare results and see who they did better than cos they do.

most schools have various academic rewards, so why not sports day. losing is a sad fact of life we all have to learn to deal with.

and yes i was the fat kid who came last in all the races and anchored the tug of war in my mixed sex school sports day. and no, it hasn't scarred me for life.

Err, but didn't you call sports people freaks?

Erm Soapbox, that sounds pretty much what the Sports Day I went to yesterday was like (and did I mention the Pimms).

Everyone else's sounds like the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

oh I indulge in trigonometry, quite often in fact...

in fact i'm off to do some now

am not sure what the problem is really

Like I said, just make school sports day non compulsory. Then everyone is happy, surely.

yes bti then theres no totting up of scores

there are abotu 12 kids pre reace
the parents dont care htey are yakking

Are you all still at it?

So 1st Prize for Posting Stamina is Awarded to ....

Aloha

Congratulations

and commiserations to all the losers

Did I say anything personally insulting about you? No. But hey, I'll just bear it in mind in future.

Congratulations aloha!

I can face losing, really I can