Youth sports have really turned into a shell of what it used to be. Sports are supposed to be fun for the kids, with competition, but not an overwhelming amount of it. The kids need the competition, for it was David A. Feigly, PhD, of the Youth Sports Research Council at Rutgers University, who said “True sportsmanship cannot exist unless there is an honest desire to win” (Robinson 19). Part of sportsmanship is putting in the honest desire to win, not just being a fair athlete. Being fair is important though, and that point in youth sports has seemingly been lost at certain times during the intense heat of games.
There are many examples of how people have gotten out of hand during youth sports games, more so parents than kids in most cases. In 2000, a Massachusetts hockey parent beat a coach overseeing a friendly scrimmage to death after the scrimmage apparently became “too rough for his son” (Robinson 95). In another case, officials were forced to disqualify a team from the Little League World Series after …show more content…
A way to get that is through competition. Kind of like what Feigly was meaning when he said “True Sportsmanship cannot exists unless there is an honest desire to win” was that part of sportsmanship was having competition and a want to win. The challenge between opponents, putting in all they have against each other, giving their best effort against each other all the time is a key part of sportsmanship. That is part of what makes sports fun, is the competition, and that is why competition feeds into sportsmanship. When the athletes take that desire too far, and start cheating, and start losing the character a good sport is supposed to have, that’s when the competition becomes too intense for youth sports. An intense desire to compete is a big part of the lesson children learn and something the children use