When Competition Hurts…
Our youngest son played lacrosse for many years. It’s one of those games that breaks ALL the rules. They run with sticks in their hands; they hit and poke their opponents with them leaving permanent bruises on the forearms of players for the entire season. They push each other out-of-bounds. They do all of this and more - and none of it is against the rules. I remember one heated game in particular. One of our players had been knocked unconscious; our coaches got ejected from the game. Our team was in disarray. A fight broke out. More ejections. Now we barely had enough people to play. Our son started barking orders. He ran down the field on offense and then one of his teammates would throw him a “long stick” from the sidelines and Michael would run back and play defense - a position he never played. Michael was hit so many times it was all I could do to not take the field myself. After that game he had three loose teeth and a profound sense of accomplishment as victory was achieved. I heard one of the parents say of my son, “Man, that kid is competitive!” I was so proud. I did not give this a second thought - we won! Our team was tough! My kid was COMPETITIVE!
Competition is a negative interaction that occurs among organisms whenever two or more organisms require the same limited resource… Therefore, competitors reduce each other’s growth, reproduction, or survival. (Source: www.biologyreference.com/Ce-Co/Competition.html#ixzz3xK2cfjuj)
A few years later my son walked off the lacrosse field for the last time; it was his senior year in high school. As he walked up to me roughly tossed his stick on his game and said, “No kid of mine is ever going to play this game.” Oh, the things I wished I had asked more questions about over the years! After eight years of playing the sport, Michael concluded that it was not one that fostered the character traits he would want his kid to possess. This would have been great information for me to have. I could have reduced mileage on my car as I traveled all of the state of Virginia and hours huddled on cold bleachers in all manner of bad weather, endless purchases of team snacks and a car that forever smelled like teenage boys and their stinky gear. Not to mention 8 years of my son being exposed to a game that did not enhance his character! I am sure that a different coaching staff and team ethos might have turned these years around and resulted in glorious memories but that was not his experience. I never, not once, asked the right questions.
Folks, we might be missing something if we embrace competition as a core value.
