Finally, a good sportsmanship story

[BillyMac]

Originally Posted by Mark Padgett

I wonder what that Texas HS coach in that other thread would say about this?

Great question. Great post. Thanks for sharing.

During the last season that I coached middle school basketball, right before a few politically active parents "encouraged" me to leave, we hadn't won a game right up until just before Christmas break. Besides not winning a game, I had a few sixth graders who had not as yet played a single minute of middle school "varsity" basketball. In our last game before Christmas break, we were ahead by about twelve points with about four minutes left in the game. Two of our opponent's best players had fouled out. It was going to be our first win of the young season. I looked down to the end of the bench and saw the faces of those sixth graders who hadn't gotten into a "varsity" game yet. I did not want them going home over the Christmas break, meeting family members who would probably ask them about how their basketball team was doing, and how they were doing, to only reply, "We only won one game, and I haven't played in a real game yet". So I put them in the game, to see the lead decrease to two points with less than a minute to play. Now I had another problem. Do I pull them, and put in the regulars to seal the win, or do I show them that I have faith in them? I chose to have faith in them, at the risk of losing the game. We won by three when our opponents missed a three pointer at the buzzer. Of course it could have backfired on me, with us losing, and with the older players blaming the loss, not on me, but on the younger players. One of those sixth graders made a free throw with ten seconds left to put us up by three. She was as proud as she could be. After the game, one of the parents, whose daughter was a granddaughter of a former town councilman, complained to the principal that my poor judgment in making substitutions at the end of the game almost led to another loss. That's all the "encouragement" that I needed. To me, winning was very important, but there were a lot of other things just as important, if not more important, as winning middle school basketball games.