Keeping Score: Is Fun Or Winning More Important To Youth Sports?

Keeping score is the essence of sports. It’s what competition and games are all about and it’s how we measure ourselves against one another.

But not every sports league keeps score. As you may know, many youth leagues around the country simply let athletes play until time expires, never tallying the points for each team.

Is this the right way to teach our young athletes? Similar to participation trophies, there are good points and bad points about not keeping score.

For one thing, young athletes are typically fragile, particularly if they’re not the most talented when they first start playing. They’re just trying to learn the game for the first time, so the two most important things to focus on should be helping to build their confidence and keeping them interested in the sport.

That means there’s no reason to throw them right into intense game situations. By not keeping score, young players are able to just focus on playing the game and learning the rules; not worrying about the outcome.

And when young athletes are on teams that never win, that consistent losing is an easy way for them to lose interest and stop playing the sport altogether.

Of course, it’s hard to learn how the game is actually played without knowing how to win. Without a score, the game becomes a sequence of events with no consequences. That isn’t a game so much as it’s practice.

Part of learning how the game is played is what happens when you’re winning and losing. How does the strategy change when you are up? How does it change when you’re down?

Winning and losing — and keeping score — is an important lesson to learn for life, not just sports. After all, part of youth athletics is to teach children important life lessons, chief among them is that not everything is always going to go their way. They won’t always be the best.

And learning how to win and lose is an important step in building character. In victory, players should want to be humble and respectful. When it comes to losing, they need to learn how to lose without complaining and how to learn from their mistakes in order to become better.

Winning and losing also teaches young players how to work hard and game plan. By keeping score, it teaches kids that the winning team worked hard for the win and the losing team must work harder the next time. And if there is no score, there is no reason to focus on the opponent. Determining a clear winner and loser forces the need to game plan ahead of time.

At the end of the day though, sports are all about having fun.

When playing a game for the first time, it is supposed to solely be about having fun and learning the very basics of the game. By eliminating the score, young athletes don’t need to worry about feeling bad and just simply focus on playing.

There’s plenty of time for athletes to be pushed hard and learn how to win and lose. Sometimes kids just need to have fun. Sometimes the score isn’t the most important thing.

Are we teaching young athletes bad lessons by not keeping score? While there are pros and cons, sports are supposed to be fun. What do you think? Let us know in the comments.

Are You Keeping Score?

Author Bio

Bobbie Quinn, co-founder of Gladiator Custom Mouthguards, played both lacrosse and field hockey as a youth and went on to play Division 1 women’s lacrosse in college. Bobbie continues to play women’s league field hockey and enjoys watching her son play various sports.