A Lesson Learned

Yesterday, I had the great privilege of watching PookieBear (my boyfriend’s 11 year old daughter) play a ‘rough-around-the-edges’ 11 year old girls from another town in CT.

The team, their coach, and the parents have gotten themselves a bad reputation this season and many official reports were filed against them due to their bullying, roughness and bad sportsmanship.

Needless to say, we were all very apprehensive about the safety of our girls at this game.

The game started and the other coach started yelling at the refs. The refs gave him a warning that he was going to get thrown out of the gym if he does that again and let our team take 2 shots as a penalty against their team. That set the tone for the rest of the game and that coach more or less behaved himself after that.

The other teams girls were tough, mean and pushy, but our team just stood their ground and played with grace and sportsmanship. We, as the parents and supporters of our team, clapped when the other team scored a basket and acted as we normally do at the games.

Our team did not get upset when the refs did not catch the other team’s fouls, our team just focused on playing the best game they could. And they did. And they won.

I don’t think I’ve ever been more proud of PookieBear. Not only did she score three quarter’s of the points, and play her best game ever, she (and the rest of the team) refused to stoop to their level. And refused to show them how afraid they were of them.

On the way home, she didn’t even complain about all the unfair calls, the pushing, the shoving, the elbowing in the ribs. She just talked about the huge lesson she learned: that doing the right thing wins.

It’s about playing with everything you’ve got, within the rules, with sportsmanship and with fun.

Her coach and dad, Capt, is an amazing person to have taught them all this.