[billw55]

Of course, the tiers/divisions are almost surely based on total enrollment at each school. Perhaps they have some multipliers, for example for private schools, but mostly the gap in divisions means that the winning team was from a much larger school. I can imagine the 9th tier being a school with only a 300 or so enrollment. Budgets are often tight at such schools, and the coach may be volunteering.

Still, this particular small school team had multiple huge losses to bigger schools. Whoever scheduled those games had to know what would happen. Was it the coach? Possible, but I doubt it. I suspect someone higher up the chain, such as the athletic director, principal or even superintendent. Why? Well, in college big schools often pay small schools a substantial sum to come get pounded. Was this small school trying to make some money? If so, is that necessarily bad? A lot of questions.

[Trinidad]

barmar, on 2015-January-21, 16:25, said:

Of course, a league game is not the same as an exhibition game from a contest. But I'll bet that in the early rounds of Wimbledon, the top seeds don't play as hard as in the late rounds, because they don't need to, and this allows them to conserve their strength (but if the opponent is doing well, they'll ramp up).

That's not what I see. The top contestants want to win every game, in order to make the match as short as possible, to preserve energy.

This is because tennis is not a timed event: It lasts until someone has won 3 sets. That makes tennis incomparable to high school basketball. But yes, in professional soccer, with very busy programs, you can see that the team that has the upper hand substitutes their star player out of the game.

The reason, however, is not because it would be unsportsmanlike to "run up the score". (If anything, it is considered unsportsmanlike not to try and run up the score. The fans have paid for their tickets.)
The reasons are:
to give the player some rest
to give the "man of the match" an "honorary substitution": take him out of the game 10 minutes before the end to focus all the attention on him, to give the crowd the opportunity to respond with an ovation.

And, of course, it is only human that players lose their drive when they are 5-0 ahead when opponents haven't had anything close to a scoring opportunity, as compared to a 1-1 score with every possibility to pull of a win (and having to prevent a loss).

Rik

[billw55]

Trinidad, on 2015-January-22, 08:14, said:

That's not what I see. The top contestants want to win every game, in order to make the match as short as possible, to preserve energy.

This is because tennis is not a timed event: It lasts until someone has won 3 sets.

I don't entirely agree. While the top players do want to conserve energy, shortening the match to the fewest games is not the only way to do this. If Djokovic, Nadal, etc can win in straight sets exerting only 75% effort, that would probably be worth playing a few extra games. Also, if up a break, they might not try so hard when receiving, instead relying on closing out the set on serve.

I any case, I really don't think they are playing all out against qualifiers. They would not say so to the media of course, but I bet you could get an honest answer from McEnroe.

[ArtK78]

One should not compare professional sports to scholastic sports.

Still, in American professional sports, there is an old saying, "What goes around comes around." If a very good team beats up on a very bad team and runs up the score, the beaten team will remember it. Given that the performance of various teams tends to be cyclical over time, so that good teams often become less good and bad teams often improve, there may come a time when the roles are reversed.

[MrAce]

billw55, on 2015-January-19, 15:38, said:

This isn't pro sports and these aren't adults. Ease off.

Then why would you and others see the score of an amateur athletic event, performed by kids, a humiliation? This is why I said it is laughable, and I still think it is. It becomes humiliation only when it is believed to be one by majority. To me it is just a score, allowed by the rules of the game. Seems to me people are complaining about something that they created in their mind, lol.

Instead of teaching to kids that there is nothing to be humiliated by losing badly, and that they would be respected as long as they tried their best, you all are trying to teach them that other team should have shown mercy to them. Instead of giving examples to kids about so many famous sport events where a boxer or a team lost so badly, gained nothing but respect for their effort to do their best even when losing badly, instead you are creating stupid terminology such as "running up the score" As others said I do not even have a translation for this to my native language.

Bottom line is, in US, the role of coaches and teams in amateur sports are exaggerated, which everyone seems to be ok with. Fine. Which leads to auto exaggerated reactions to the big loss as in our case. What I am saying is "you made your bed, you have to sleep in it, don't cry"

[mycroft]

My guess (and it's only a guess, coming from NCAA football, in fact) is that there are "traditional games" that get played every year, and simply have to be part of the schedule. Unfortunately, after 60, 70 years, close rivalries can become - less close.

If it wasn't forced for some reason, I can't understand why anyone setting schedules would agree to play a game with such disparity. For the top tier team, it would be a total waste of time; for the 9th tier team, a foregone conclusion. So why not set up a moderately competitive game instead?

I guess the other answer would be the coach going in saying "Look, most of the time, we're going to be playing reasonable matches for your ability. But you need to know what a 'real team' looks like, so we're playing these guys as our third game. This is just for experience; we'll be watching the game next week in practices and you'll see what they're doing, having felt it on the court. This should really improve your game - but it will feel humiliating at the time. Just try to roll with it and know in the end it will be worth it." Maybe even, "you know, you don't play the full-court press well, or against it well, and that's really because nobody we normally play against does it regularly or well. We're going to learn, and here's how we're going to learn..." In these cases, 210-12 or 156-20, does it matter? But if they stop doing what we set up the game to learn to play against, don't we lose something?

[billw55]

mycroft, on 2015-January-22, 11:34, said:

If it wasn't forced for some reason, I can't understand why anyone setting schedules would agree to play a game with such disparity. For the top tier team, it would be a total waste of time; for the 9th tier team, a foregone conclusion. So why not set up a moderately competitive game instead?

There might be a financial motive as I mentioned.

[Bbradley62]

The two high schools are less than 10 miles apart, so someone probably thought that it was a convenient game to schedule. The teams did not play each other in any of the previous 3 years, so it's not a tradition. (I stopped looking after getting that far.)

[onoway]

There is a difference between people who are trying to make their mark in the world and those who are out just for fun and exercise, and whoever put the two together ought to be slapped silly. It would NOT be fun for anyone, not even the kibs, to put a casual lower intermediate player in a JEC match and few casual intermediates would have the (insert appropriate word here) to want to do it, aside from wanting the notoriety value.

We have a standing policy now not to show the barometer in team matches as some of the early ones were so lopsided you could SEE the desire to just go away and maybe even give up bridge growing with each passing hand. That is maybe 15% the case when they don't know how badly they are getting stomped, AND it doesn't seem to have nearly the same long term negative effect as watching the score get worse and worse..like having a root canal without anaesthetic...you know there is an end to the pain but you just want it to be over.

These are KIDS and unless both teams are intending to try to get into professional sports, in which case a reality check might be in order, whoever organized this match is irresponsible. This is a sports event comparable to bullying and should never have taken place. IMO the idea of teaching kids that winning fairly is not enough, you should humiliate your opps if you can, is the antithesis of the sort of attitude the world needs these days.

IF the coaches had no say in the event other than to refuse to play or not, then they ought to have met and arranged some sort of alternative..perhaps matching players and having each player from the strong team coach a weaker player in technique - some sort of mentoring thing, maybe,...something so it could be a productive and fun thing for both without compromising the strong team. There are surely other ways to handle it. Even after the first quarter, when it must have been obvious what a sham it was. Shame on the organizers and on the coaches.

[onoway]

MrAce, on 2015-January-22, 10:49, said:

Then why would you and others see the score of an amateur athletic event, performed by kids, a humiliation? This is why I said it is laughable, and I still think it is. It becomes humiliation only when it is believed to be one by majority. To me it is just a score, allowed by the rules of the game. Seems to me people are complaining about something that they created in their mind, lol.

If you are competing and your opps can casually disregard your best efforts as virtually meaningless no matter how hard you try, it is going to be experienced by most people as humiliating, nobody likes to be made to feel inept, incompetent,powerless, insignificant. If a person CHOOSES to put themselves in such a situation as a learning experience, that's a totally different situation, these kids play when and who they are told to.

Quote

Instead of teaching to kids that there is nothing to be humiliated by losing badly, and that they would be respected as long as they tried their best, you all are trying to teach them that other team should have shown mercy to them. Instead of giving examples to kids about so many famous sport events where a boxer or a team lost so badly, gained nothing but respect for their effort to do their best even when losing badly, instead you are creating stupid terminology such as "running up the score" As others said I do not even have a translation for this to my native language.

Telling a child not to feel humiliated in this situation is the same as telling a child that they should not be upset about being beat up or bullied - denying reality. There have to be other options and it is irresponsible of the coaches not to look for them, a total lack of respect for the players of either team to have this match go forward as a real competition instead of the farce it obviously was.For sure, it's a good thing to tell the kids that you respect them for doing their best, but it's a rare person, especially a child, to whom that is other than very cold comfort.

Quote

Bottom line is, in US, the role of coaches and teams in amateur sports are exaggerated, which everyone seems to be ok with. Fine. Which leads to auto exaggerated reactions to the big loss as in our case. What I am saying is "you made your bed, you have to sleep in it, don't cry"

The point is, the KIDS did NOT make the bed, the irresponsible adults in their lives did, and then made the kids lie in it.

This post has been edited by diana_eva: 2015-January-22, 14:42
Reason for edit: fixed quotes

[mycroft]

If I enter the Spingold, one of three things is going to happen:

1) I get matched in a head-to-head with a single-digit seed and get stomped (check, got the scoresheet)
2) I get matched in a 4-way, play against a 30-odd seed, hopefully survive the repechage against the other cannonfodder, and get matched on the second day with a single-digit seed and get stomped (hasn't happened yet)
3) I get matched in a 4-way, play the 30-odd seed, and don't survive the repechage. (sort of check; the last year they did 4-qualify-1s, we slipped up and lost to the 69th seed, a match we should have won, and didn't get a repechage against the 125th).

Only one of those outcomes is bad - *if I voluntarily enter the Spingold*.

I know the mercy rule is important for a certain stage of play - I can see 12-year-olds not wanting to play a game with no meaning, even if it's their last game in the Little League championships ever - and they're good enough to get there. I know that I at 25 had no qualms about being chopped up for beans at the bridge table and paying (a bit) for the privilege. So, when does that cut over? These are highschool competitive girls - 16, 17, 18 years old...

My feeling is, if the cannonfodder team players *know* they're fodder, and are playing the game, anyway, for whatever reason is valid to them, I don't care what the score is, or what the parents or the school thinks. However, if the players know they're fodder, and they have no idea why they're playing this game and would rather stay home and not get humiliated in public, but are forced by the coach or the school or the parents, then I have a problem.

I would also have a problem with pullback if it were obvious; "oh, they're just playing with us now. She had the shot, but instead is just playing keepaway to humiliate me more." Sure, rest the first-stringers, give the junior players their limelight, try new stuff; but to the handicaps you're applying, play 100%; don't Washington Generals me, please. I may not be all players, however.

[Trinidad]

The problem simply lies in the fact that someone thinks that the score is more important than the game.

I agree that it would have been better not to have had this game, because nobody really benefits a lot from it, but once the game is in play, just play it and have fun. The score has nothing to do with that.

Whoever taught these kids (and coaches) that the enjoyment of the game depends on the score is the real culprit. A 2 game suspension is not enough punishment for that crime.

Rik

[gwnn]

Bbradley62, on 2015-January-17, 19:27, said:

Surely, we can all find something in there to determine what was wrong with what happened during the game in question.

OK I give up, I looked at the list five times now and I still don't know which point you mean. Are you talking about "To eliminate all possibilities which tend to destroy the best values of the game." that's the only one that I could see someone seeing apply here but I don't think it does. Or not treating it like life and death? That sounds like more about things like injuring an opponent or cheating in various ways to prosper. Playing your normal game of basketball is protecting the best values of the game. What if the team had agreed to play a little game and tried not to score any more points, throwing the ball out ostentatiously whenever they get to the other team's plank, and easily preventing the opposition from scoring? Would that not be much better described as destroying the values of the game?

[barmar]

Trinidad, on 2015-January-22, 21:37, said:

Whoever taught these kids (and coaches) that the enjoyment of the game depends on the score is the real culprit. A 2 game suspension is not enough punishment for that crime.

I don't think it's just the score. It's how the score was achieved.

[mycroft]

Unless you mean "backing off in the second half", I think that's the problem. "How the score was achieved" also boils down to "who agreed to schedule this game in the first place?"

If you mean the top-tier's game strategy, that *is* the same as "Playing EHAA in the weakest game in the city". Which I'm lucky, my partner and I can switch, so we don't do that. But the Polish pair that comes in and gets the side-eye for playing Polish Club in the 199er game has a real problem - it's the way they play, not "a pressure strategy to humiliate, instead of just beat, the weak opponents".

[quiddity]

It is interesting to learn that the concept of "running up the score" is not a universal one. For those who are asking about the logic behind it.. there is no logic. Just as there is no logic in being insulted by someone "flipping you the bird". It is just a cultural norm and all I can tell you is that in North American sports, almost without exception, it is extremely insulting to run up the score when a victory is assured. This is true at all levels, whether elementary school soccer (where "mercy rules" are universally enforced) or pro baseball, where merely attempting to steal second base with a comfortable lead will likely earn the next batter a 95mph fastball to the head. It is not a matter of "being taught that score matters" or being poor losers or whatever.

In scholastic sports, if a coach goes out of his way to insult the other team then he should expect a suspension. This one was particularly well earned. And if he somehow didn't know that winning a basketball game by 160 points would be insulting, because he's from Germany or whatever, well, now he knows.

[gwnn]

OK so the commentators here think that trying to avoid running up the score by taking a knee (1 yard from touchdown) is also offensive:

https://www.youtube....h?v=DpiQByIFt8k

WTF? This is why unwritten rules are mostly bullshit. You don't know when you're supposed to apply them.

[diana_eva]

gwnn, on 2015-January-23, 18:35, said:

WTF? This is why unwritten rules are mostly bullshit. You don't know when you're supposed to apply them.

Yeah, that's why I commented earlier that they'd better have some procedure in place. Maybe written guidelines suggesting what to do when the game is clearly unbalanced.

On this particular case, I tend to agree that the coach should have known what was going quite early, how long would it take him to see that they were "that bad"?

[mike777]

To be fair the coach often won games by 70+ and got a well done from his bosses. He does claim that the game "got away from him". basically in the "moment" he was not sure how to create more handicaps that would not "insult" the other team.

In any case he now knows 160 means he will lose his pay.

[ArtK78]

quiddity, on 2015-January-23, 17:32, said:

It is interesting to learn that the concept of "running up the score" is not a universal one. For those who are asking about the logic behind it.. there is no logic. Just as there is no logic in being insulted by someone "flipping you the bird". It is just a cultural norm and all I can tell you is that in North American sports, almost without exception, it is extremely insulting to run up the score when a victory is assured. This is true at all levels, whether elementary school soccer (where "mercy rules" are universally enforced) or pro baseball, where merely attempting to steal second base with a comfortable lead will likely earn the next batter a 95mph fastball to the head. It is not a matter of "being taught that score matters" or being poor losers or whatever.

In scholastic sports, if a coach goes out of his way to insult the other team then he should expect a suspension. This one was particularly well earned. And if he somehow didn't know that winning a basketball game by 160 points would be insulting, because he's from Germany or whatever, well, now he knows.

The professional baseball example is something I have never understood. There is no clock in baseball, so, theoretically, a team that is way behind can come back. And every so often, it happens. So, for that reason, you can never score enough. Therefore, stealing bases, even when way ahead, is still the right tactic. But it is against the "unwritten" rules of baseball.

There are a lot of "unwritten rules" in baseball that are stupid. Besides, in the stolen base example, all that the other team has to do is throw him out. If they can't stop him from stealing the base, that is their problem. This is PROFESSIONAL BASEBALL. Have some pride in what you do.