When Sport Does Not Go to Plan
One of the great things about School sport is that it provides our students with experiences that extend well beyond winning games, making teams or collecting medals.
Sport gives children opportunities to experience success and enjoyment but equally importantly it exposes them to disappointment, frustration, selection decisions and moments when things simply do not go the way they hoped.
As parents and educators, what we do in those moments can be just as important as what happens on the court, field or pitch.
It is completely understandable that we want our children to succeed. We want them to make the team, get more game time, perform well and perhaps progress to a higher level. When that does not happen, it can be tempting to immediately look for a reason.
Why wasn’t my child selected?
Why didn’t they get more game time?
Why is another student playing in that position?
Why doesn’t the coach recognise their ability?
Sometimes those are reasonable questions and there will always be occasions when a conversation with a coach or the School is appropriate. Coaches make mistakes. Selection decisions will not always be perfect and sometimes the School may not appoint the right coach for a particular team. As a School we should always be prepared to listen and reflect.
One thing I have learnt as a teacher and a parent is that the version of events that makes its way home is not always the complete picture. This is rarely deliberate. Children naturally see situations through their own experiences and emotions and what is communicated at home can sometimes be an interpretation of what happened rather than the full context. At other times details can be unintentionally left out or the story can evolve in a way that supports how the child is feeling about the situation. Before assuming something has gone wrong it can therefore be valuable to seek the broader context and understand the situation from all perspectives.
However, there is another question that is sometimes much more valuable:
What can my child learn from this experience?
Perhaps they need to train more consistently. Perhaps another student is currently performing better. Perhaps they need to improve a particular part of their game. Sometimes despite working incredibly hard they may simply not reach the sporting level that they or their family had hoped.
That can be difficult to accept but it is also part of sport.
Our instinct as adults is often to remove disappointment from the lives of children. Yet some of the most valuable lessons sport provides come precisely because we cannot guarantee the outcome.
Not everyone can make the First team. Not everyone can be selected in their preferred position. On occasions playing time may not be equal and there will always be another athlete who is faster, stronger or more skilful.
How children learn to respond to those realities matters.
If every disappointment immediately becomes someone else’s fault, we risk taking away one of the greatest gifts sport can provide: the opportunity to develop perspective and personal responsibility.
The conversation on the drive home from sport can reinforce disappointment and blame or it can help a child develop perspective. It can focus on the coach, the umpire, the opposition and everything that was supposedly unfair or it can focus on effort, what went well and what comes next.
At Westminster we want our Sport program to be positive, inclusive and aspirational. We want students to strive to be the best athletes they can be and we should never apologise for encouraging ambition.
But aspiration also needs perspective.
For a very small number of students School sport may be part of a pathway towards elite competition. For the overwhelming majority, its greatest value will be the friendships they make, the connection they develop with their School, the memories they create and the personal qualities they build along the way.
Years from now very few will remember whether they played 20 minutes or 30 minutes in a particular game or whether they were selected in the A team or B team.
They may well remember how they responded when things did not go their way.
Our responsibility as a School is to provide quality programs, good coaching, appropriate opportunities and an environment in which students can develop and enjoy their sport.
Our responsibility as adults around them is not always to make the pathway easier. Sometimes it is to help children navigate the difficult parts of it.
Because success in School sport should not only be measured by which team a student makes or how far they progress.
Sometimes success is learning how to respond when they don’t.