Many a parent has taken massive pride in their child’s sporting achievement at junior school where the child has thrived and won trophies and awards galore. Their names are up on Honours boards around the school Hall; they are constantly up on the stage receiving recognition for their successes. This pride perhaps encourages the parent to send their child to a senior school which regularly wins matches and has many players selected for provincial and national teams. They proudly advise the senior school of their child’s amazing talent and the senior school does indeed welcome the child into their fold. Once at senior school, however, the parents are distraught to discover the child is not selected for the A or even the B team but only the C team – a real life situation. What went wrong?
The simple fact is that every contest needs context. The successes of a child in competition at one place needs to be taken in context. The child who did well in junior school may have done so because there were few children at the school while at the senior school numerous children who also did well in their junior schools are also in competition for places. We need firstly to see the contest for what it is and then see that contest in context.
A contest has variously been defined as “an event in which people compete for supremacy in a sport or other activity, or in a quality”; it is “a struggle for superiority or victory”; it is “a competition to do better than other people, especially one in which people’s skill in a particular activity or sport is tested”. Those will all well explain the concept of contest and of competition in school sport. It is, in short, as the name suggests, a test. But such definitions are in fact limited. Yes, competitive fixtures are a test of superiority over others but in fact, they are more about a test of our own ability and attitude. It is not so much the opposition we have to overcome; we have to overcome our own doubts, fears, inadequacies. The real value of competition is to test ourselves against ourselves.
We must see any contest against others within the correct context in different areas. We need to see contests in the context of time. Our current achievements may set us well above others in the past (records being broken) but these in turn will be below others in future. We need to see contest in the context of age and development appropriateness. Children develop at different rates so a child in junior school may flourish because they have developed physically sooner. Success at junior school is no guarantee of success at senior school.
We also need to see contest in the context of place. We may be thrilled that our child plays for Zimbabwe in a sport but when few players play that sport it is perhaps not such a big achievement as someone who is selected in a sport that has thousands of people playing. Indeed, one child may play for his country which is very weak in that sport internationally while another more talented child may not be playing that sport in a country where thousands more people are playing.
We need to see contests in the context of the game. Our team may have won a match but it may well have been on account of the other team having numerous injuries or absentees or illnesses; it may have been on account of lucky breaks or helpful decisions. The conquest is not everything.
Furthermore, we need to see sporting contests in the context of life. A recent news item shared how Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British citizen who had been in jail in Iran for six years, survived the experience through an extraordinary contrast; in her solitary confinement she watched Andy Murray win his first Wimbledon title. Nine months after her release last year she eventually met with Murray but it was he who gained the most from the meeting for he shared how listening to her experience had “put issues in his own life – like back and knee pain – into context”.
When it comes to definitions of a word, we may well present a synonym for the word but also an antonym, to put it in context, in contrast. So our responsibility as coaches and parents is to ensure we keep contest in context. A win (or undefeated record) does not necessarily make a coach a great coach; he may have been given quality players or the opposition that year was much weaker. Parents need to understand that the child’s national selection does not necessarily mean she will go on to further achievements. A contest may lead to conquest but it must be taken in context.
