Can The Pendulum Swing Too Far?

By Tom Finn

Member, Board of Directors

My daughter started playing volleyball three years ago when she began high school; this year, she was fortunate enough to make the varsity team.  I always enjoy watching her play, and I go to her matches as often as possible.  Varsity tends to be a little more intense, as the stakes are seemingly supposed to be higher.  I find myself cheering for my daughter and her teammates in her varsity matches just as I had done in her first two years, encouraging them in a positive manner to do their best.  However, that changed halfway through her first varsity season.
 
A rival school was hosting my daughter's team for a match on a random weekday afternoon.  I attended the match and cheered for her and her teammates as I usually do.  Being that my daughter is one of the taller girls on the team, she plays on the front line quite a bit, making her responsible for defense near the net.  One of my usual utterances of encouragement for my daughter in this position is to shout, "Block, block, block, block, block!" which is what I did as the opposition prepared to set someone for a kill early in the match.  Such an exclamation would probably be akin to what a coach might shout in the same scenario.  It didn’t appear to be negative, intimidating, or threatening.  There was no reference to race, gender, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, or religion in anything muttered.  And my intent was certainly not to purposefully disconcert someone, like what basketball fans sitting behind a basket might do while free throws are being shot by the opposing team.  From what I can recall, I have been doing this for as long as my daughter has been playing volleyball, including during her club (non-scholastic) seasons, without any complaints or protests.  At this day's match, however, a player on the opposing team took great exception to my encouraging utterances to the point of tears.
 
The officials stopped the match, and the opposing coach insisted that my daughter's coach tell me to leave the gym.  My immediate reaction, and that of the parents sitting around me, was to ask, "For what?"  Out of respect for my daughter's coach and to avoid embarrassment of being asked to leave, I agreed not to make any further utterances in support of my daughter or her teammates, although I felt like I was being bullied for something that had been normalized over a two-and-a-half-year period.
 
To add insult to injury, the opposing team sent an administrator to stand near me to make sure I stayed in line for the remainder of the game.  I politely asked the administrator if he was sent to make sure I didn't hurt anyone else's feelings.  He gave no reply, perhaps out of embarrassment that he was forced to guard me.  However, one of the opposing players, overhearing my comment to the administrator, started shouting at me, yelling, "Shut up!  You're, like, fifty!"  (I took this as a compliment since I will turn fifty-five next month, so I'll take a five-year haircut off my age anytime.)
 
I admit that these student-athletes are technically children, which can invoke a new set of standards.  However, the lesson I took away from this experience is that the upcoming generations may not be properly prepared to handle the adversity that they will face in the real world.  I was told that my utterances, which I viewed as encouraging for my daughter, were "distracting" and "annoying," not rude or unsportsmanlike.  If that was truly how members of the other team felt, wouldn’t it be a smarter move for the coaches to quietly and politely conference about the situation and choose words properly?  I still may not have agreed with it, but I’m sure my defenses wouldn’t have gone up the same way if my daughter’s coach had approached me in the spirit of compromise after a civil conversation with the other coach and said, “Tom, for today, would you mind toning it down a bit?  That girl is apparently struggling with some personal stuff, and we’d like to show a little empathy as a team.”
 
If we attempt to remove every possible distraction and annoyance from interscholastic competition, how are these student-athletes being prepared for a future filled with those very things?  Yes, outstanding sportsmanship is paramount, but the pendulum can't swing too far in the other direction, or we risk raising a generation of individuals unprepared for the true obstacles one can (and probably will) face.