108-3 girls basketball rout raises questions

[didymus]

Yahoo!:

108-3 girls basketball rout raises questions

It’s been called unsportsmanlike. It’s been called ugly. The question now is whether Christian Heritage (Utah) High, which routed West Ridge (Utah) Academy, 108-3, in a girls basketball game last week, actually did anything wrong by blowing out an overwhelmed opponent.

The stunning scoreline – from a varsity game in which Christian Heritage reportedly never used a full-court press – nearly defies belief. As reported in the Deseret News and Salt Lake Tribune, Christian Heritage scored 28 points per quarter for the first three periods and 24 in the fourth, providing a consistent average of nearly two baskets per minute across the entire game. The Crusaders shut out West Ridge (pictured above running on to the court for the team’s game following the rout) for the first three quarters, and Christian Heritage starter Josi Rydin even racked up a unique triple-double, with exactly 10 points, 10 rebounds and 10 steals.

“I don’t know why the score was that high, or what the point was,” Jamie Keefer, West Ridge’s athletic director and a coach for the girls’ team, told the Salt Lake Tribune. “I don’t think it would’ve happened that way if it were the other way around.”

Yet while Christian Heritage is a clear and obvious target for criticism, Crusaders coach Rob McGill has argued that he had little choice. According to ABC 4 News out of Salt Lake City, the program had just nine players available for both the varsity and junior varsity games against West Ridge, leaving the coach with little option when considering whether to pull out his starters early in the game.

I’m not into sports but I’m with the coach – was he supposed to take two players off the court to even things up or tell them not to take any more shots?

Life isn’t about self-esteem, it’s about reality.

 

[LilyM]

Sports are inevitably going to impact on self-esteem in any event - most every game has a winner and a loser, after all.

I don’t think the winning team should have played less than their best.

As to the number of players, it’s a tough call.

Arguably if a team has less players because some of them become injured DURING the game and become unable to play for that reason, it would be fair for the other team to pull the same number of players out to even things up.

But for a team to start out with less than the required number of players - why on earth were there that few students in the basketball program that numbers became an issue in the first place? Does it cost any more to train a few extra girls - don’t they all train together anyway? Surely it wouldn’t be through lack of interest or low number of students or anything.

 

[hxcCatholic413]

Yahoo!:

I’m not into sports but I’m with the coach – was he supposed to take two players off the court to even things up or tell them not to take any more shots?

Life isn’t about self-esteem, it’s about reality.

I would have to disagree with you. The winning team could have just held onto the ball and waited to take a shot once the clock ticked down to 3 or something along those lines. It’s very demeaning to lose games like this.

 

[ConstantineTG]

In Canada there is a “mercy rule” like in soccer that if a team goes up by more than 5 points, that team actually loses.

Its equally stupid. You promote mediocrity instead. Being beaten badly doesn’t have to kill self esteem, it could also build competitiveness or acceptance that you can’t win 'em all.

 

[bbarrick8383]

I would have to disagree with you. The winning team could have just held onto the ball and waited to take a shot once the clock ticked down to 3 or something along those lines. It’s very demeaning to lose games like this.

No, as you coach you don’t teach players to give 110%, unless you’re winning really good then slack off. They will take that mentality to losing really badly and start slacking off there as well.

You teach them to give 110% regardless.

In some ages of baseball you have a “run rule”, where if one team is getting beaten so badly by the 5th inning or so they can not catch up the umpire will call the game. Maybe something like that should be looked into if they don’t like getting beaten so badly, but they shouldn’t change the way they coach players over this.

We have a couple local schools that only go to 8th grade. I remember a game where we only had 5 players and two of us fouled out of the game. It was 3 on 5 and we still beat the other team, we could have easily slacked off and gotten beaten had the coach told us it’s ok to do so on certain occasions.

 

[curlycool89]

I think there’s one paragraph that deserves special mention.

That “commitment to excellence” comes at a cost. In this case, it was the ego of teenage girls that was affected by the effective implementation of McGill’s personal philosophy. Given that West Ridge is a school for at-risk youth, those egos in question may be even more fragile than most.

I’m just going to put that out there.

 

[bbarrick8383]

I think there’s one paragraph that deserves special mention.

I’m just going to put that out there.

We use to play OSD, Oklahoma School for the Deaf, in basketball every year. These kids never had a great team, we usually beat them fairly easily, but they played with a fierce competitive attitude that you knew as soon as the ball was in play you did not slack off on these guys.

They didn’t want you to.

It’s been years, but I think their coach at the time even told our coach to make sure that we did not play them any differently because they were deaf.

 

[cyberwolf001]

This is what is wrong with the World right here. Punishing success is one part of the Liberal Agenda I do not support.

 

[Dakota_Roberts]

IMO if a team gets up by 40 the game should end because why draw it out. Also I think it would have been honorable to even the teams up by the larger team shrinking to match the smaller team

 

[psr13]

Yahoo!:

I’m not into sports but I’m with the coach – was he supposed to take two players off the court to even things up or tell them not to take any more shots?

Life isn’t about self-esteem, it’s about reality.

I don’t know how you would work it in basketball, but there are unwritten sportsmanship rules in sports. If a game is getting out of hand, you are supposed to take maneuvers to not keep scoring. It’s not about self-esteem. It’s about being a sportsman. In baseball this often takes the form of not stealing bases, putting in a worse pitcher, or doing things like that. I’ve seen this in the Women’s College Softball World Series final games, and I’ve seen this in the Olympics. In fact, there was an uproar at the one of the recent winter games when the Canadian women’s hockey team had a ridiculous score against a really bad team.

Here’s a baseball tidbit. Once a team was really far ahead, and a there was an overthrow or something. The rookie went to the next base and then realized his mistake. So, he ran back to the previous base. I don’t remember the specifics, though.

I will say, though, that I’ve noticed baseball and softball are much more inclined to follow this rule than other sports. Sure, other sports do it, but they don’t do it to the extent that baseball and softball do.

Also, these unwritten sportsmanship rules are nothing new. They have been around for probably as long as the sport that has the tradition.

 

[didymus]

I think there’s one paragraph that deserves special mention.

That “commitment to excellence” comes at a cost. In this case, it was the ego of teenage girls that was affected by the effective implementation of McGill’s personal philosophy. Given that West Ridge is a school for at-risk youth

If they’re so fragile should they be playing sports? Or should every opposing coach tell his team “Give 110% – but not tonight because these kids are special so give them a break.”?

When did it become schools’ mission to “build self-esteem” rather than teaching?

 

[canadianguy1143]

I would like to echo what PSR said in his post about sportsmanship. Its not a case of giving 110%. The team that scored 108 to the other team that scored 3 certainly proved it is great basketball team but that would have been obvious at the end of the first quarter when they were up 28-0 or at the half with the score 56-0.

A good team exemplifies sportsmanship. They didn’t have to run up the score. The game was won by the half. Players are supposed to play for the team not for individual stats. That’s all they did by continuing the onslaught.

I also agree that there should be a “mercy” rule like what there is in other sports.

 

[Bob_Crowley]

While I don’t see that much could be done about the result of the match, if a university is going to have a name like “Christian Heritage”, with the statement by Christ about cariing for the “least of these my brothers”, and if West Ridge is for disadvantaged students, then a charitable attitude could and should be taken after the game.

How about the coach and / or players of the Christian Heritage team offering voluntary time to coach and encourage the West Ridge side? That would be Christianity in action, and a valuable witness.

That said, it’s always a pity when one team romps all over the other. The best games in my opinion are close and hard fought resulting in either a draw or a narrow victory. Such games usually have low scores as well.

 

[Scott_Lafrance]

I would have to disagree with you. The winning team could have just held onto the ball and waited to take a shot once the clock ticked down to 3 or something along those lines. It’s very demeaning to lose games like this.

Waaaaaah! It is not the offenses job to stop itself. That is the job of the opposing defense. If you cannot stop the other team, you loose. This is akin to the stupid conversation about people “making too much money”. I get called a greedy capitalist by people on this very forum because I make a heavy 6 figure income, like it magically was bestowed on me. Life is hard, sometimes you loose, sometimes you get your butt kicked. All of it is a learning lesson. rather than whine and cry like a little girl, the coach needed to man up and say “We played an aweful game, we have some things to work on”. It appears from the story that the Christian Academy coach did what he could to restrain his team, but his team was just clearly better than the other one. It happens, get over it. Life isn’t about equal outcome.

 

[Scott_Lafrance]

If they’re so fragile should they be playing sports? Or should every opposing coach tell his team “Give 110% – but not tonight because these kids are special so give them a break.”?

When did it become schools’ mission to “build self-esteem” rather than teaching?

Exactly. It was this precise reason why I pulled my kids out of public school. They focus on building a FOUNDATIONLESS sense of self esteem. True self esteem comes from accomplishing things of significance, not by stoking the ego. This only creates fragile, frail, underperforming, and entitlement-minded little brats. No wonder the Asians are kicking out butt scholastically. Their self image is a result of working hard and actually achieving something, not from the “every who plays gets a trophy” stupidity that goes on in this country.

 

[canadianguy1143]

Waaaaaah! It is not the offenses job to stop itself. That is the job of the opposing defense. If you cannot stop the other team, you loose. This is akin to the stupid conversation about people “making too much money”. I get called a greedy capitalist by people on this very forum because I make a heavy 6 figure income, like it magically was bestowed on me. Life is hard, sometimes you loose, sometimes you get your butt kicked. All of it is a learning lesson. rather than whine and cry like a little girl, the coach needed to man up and say “We played an aweful game, we have some things to work on”. It appears from the story that the Christian Academy coach did what he could to restrain his team, but his team was just clearly better than the other one. It happens, get over it. Life isn’t about equal outcome.

Where does character and sportsmanship fit in. With the score 56-0 at the half, nothing would change in the outcome.

Life is hard but sportsmanship is not about being whiny.

 

[Dale_M]

In some ages of baseball you have a “run rule”, where if one team is getting beaten so badly by the 5th inning or so they can not catch up the umpire will call the game…

This seems like a sensible rule. No purpose is served by such a lopsided victory and defeat.

In the absence of such rule, perhaps the coach of the losing team should have approached the coach of the winning team and made a one-time agreement to end the game where it stood, such as at half time or the end of the third period.

 

[Scott_Lafrance]

Where does character and sportsmanship fit in. With the score 56-0 at the half, nothing would change in the outcome.

Life is hard but sportsmanship is not about being whiny.

If it was that bad, why didn’t the referee’s just stop the game? Why didn’t the coaches meet and call it? From what I understand, the West Ridge coach came back out at half time with the intent on continuing play.

 

[kwitz]

I’m not sure what the best answer to this is. My kids have been on both sides of the huge win and I don’t know that it’s less humiliating to watch the other team have to make 20 passes and only the obvious worse kid is allowed to take the shot or just let the game go and lose big. I never felt right being on either end of these games trying to figure out what is the most Christian thing to do.

Kris

 

[larkin31]

I am a high school basketball coach.

1. I would be fired if I led a team to a 108-3 victory.
2. There are many many ways to use the lopsided game to teach skills, strategy, and character without demoralizing one’s opponents–who are still children–to such an untempered degree. This case is shameful, really.