Yesterday my son’s basketball team played a District game against one of their better opponents.  They played at less than full strength.  In fact, we only had 6 players, and so most of the kids, had to play almost the entire game.  Jeremiah never came off the floor.  He scored 15 points, and played one of his best games of the year, but the team was outmatched the entire game.

The final score was 83-45, but it could have been much worse.  We were behind 47-21 at halftime, and the other team could have turned it on and piled up 100 or more points fairly easily.  I appreciated the fact that the coach required his team to play a bit more patiently in the second half, with the game in hand.

While that type of sportsmanship used to be the norm, it is fairly rare these days.  I once heard a coach say, “It is the other coach’s responsibility to keep my team from running up the score, not mine!”  Sports are supposed to teach kids important lessons about life.  It’s hard for a coach to teach life lessons when he himself is a moronic jerk. (more…)