Winning... Is that all there is?

Winning... Is that all there is?

By Ann Atterberry

Has the play gone out of playing high school football? Should winning be everything?

Is there too much emphasis on competition or on being Number One in high schools, junior highs and even elementary schools?

An area high school student recently filed suit, charging his resignation from the football team subjected him to embarrassment and ridicule from coaches, school officials and students.

Detractors charged that Plano built a middle school and limited high school to the 11th and 12th grades rather than divide into two 3-year high school and diminish football power.

Some Dallas parents have held their high school sons back a year so that the boys would be better developed to win football games and college scholarships.

Examples like these are out of the ordinary, but are not rare.

Football fever is a highly contagious disease not limited to, but particularly virulent in Texas in general and the Dallas are in particular.

Wylie and Plano ran the course of the disease, winning state championships and being pronounced Number One in their respective divisions last month.

The Dallas Cowboys are in the final stages of the disease and hope to be pronounced Number One at today's Super Bowl.

"Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing," said coach Vince Lombardi. However, Lombardi was coaching a professional ball club where winning means profits and being on the field is definitely work, not play.

"Competition itself is normal and natural as a child enters school," says Judith Forgotson, chief, division of child psychiatry, University of Texas Health Science Center.

When a child enters school, he rapidly identifies the best reader, the best soccer player, the best speller. And he experiences "normal disappointment" when he discovers he is not the best at everything, Dr. Forgotson says.

She believes 'downplaying of competition is the best way to go, at least in elementary school. Only one kid can be Number One, and that leaves a whole host of kids who aren't."

On the high school level, she believes that "the child can be rewarded for doing his or her best without the winner-loser concept. Kids with good motor skills and coordination can generally perform well, and will develop these skills for their own satisfaction without being whipped up to a frenzy."

The psychiatrist believes the best coaches are able to assess each child's ability and have him strive to compete with himself, being firm without censuring the child or holding him up to other children.

"There's nothing wrong with winning as long as winning ins't so important that your own self-esteem depends on it. We all feel better if we win, but you shouldn't be depressed or angry if you lose or be so determined to win that you cheat," says Dr. Kenneth Altshuler, chairman of the department of psychiatry at the health science center.

"Every child out to be a winner," say Morris Brantley, director of recreative arts for the Dallas Independent School District. "If every child is a winner because he played his best, that's a good motto. It deemphasizes winning as the only goal."

Brantley, whose responsibilities include intramural competition, says that's exactly what he means. "Competition is built into each of us at an early age and goes with us through life. Some kids are more keenly competitive than others, but every kids wants to be a winner in some way."

"There's a great lesson to be learned in competition. Without it, I don't know where we'd be. I'm not saying you should sacrifice all things to be a winner. You don't have to win by the scoreboard if you do a good job."

Brantley says he's not just thinking of the child who makes the team. "Some of us have to sit on the sidelines and let those better-qualified take the field. There is no need to feel envious. Team members sacrifice a great deal of their personal time to do well for their school."

Football is not overemphasized, according to Brantley. "The people who criticize are not usually the ones involved in a successful program," he says.

Dr. Altshuler agrees with Brantley that, for a child unable or unwilling to participate in sports, parents and schools should "emphasize those things he can succeed at. If he's bookish, reward him for scholarship. If he has in interest in art, reward him with praise or by doing it together. What becomes important to a child is what his parents value."

"If winning is equal to success, then if you participate well and enjoy it, you're a winner, even in a spelling bee," Dr. Altshuler says.

Everyone involved with high school athletics has met parents who get carried away. "We do have some parents who are overzealous and push their kids to perform more than they can actually do," says Brantley.

"A very small number of students are pressured," says DISD athletic director John Kincaide, who things that values the district tries to teach through football tend to identify and eliminate students who are participating in football without real wanting to.

The district responds to what people in the community want, Kincaide says, "and they tell us what they want by the way they participate. We're the ones putting the emphasis on football. How can we turn around and say it is being overemphasized? I don't see deemphasizing football, but I do see emphasizing other program like science, math and English. They need to catch up with the popularity of football.

"We don't teach our kids to lose and we don't ask our coaches to lose, but in evaluating our coaches, winning has little to do with it. We have coaches who are not a success in winning but are a success in working with our kids. Winning is not the bottom line in the DISD."

"We don't want to get hung up on winning," Kincaide says. "Winning's just the icing on the cake."

Tom Kimbrough, coach at Plano High School, says his personal philosophy is that "the effort to win is important. Effort is much more important than winning, but that doesn't mean we're losers if we can't go all the way and win."

He say she is under no pressure from the school district to win. "The only pressure I feel is within myself to do the best job I can."

Kimbrough tries to play as many students as he can, and says football is important to him because of "the way it relates to life and its ups and downs. It helps you cope with things, and carries over into life."

Plano lost its first game this past season, and went on to win all the rest - and the state championship. Kimbrough things this is why so much enthusiasm was generated in the town. "We were underdogs so many times, and people like to see the underdog win."

When Kimbrough talks about being a team, he includes "the whole student body. I feel they share in our success because they are a part of it."

Brandon King is a Plano senior who got to play occasionally this year as second string center. Columbus Madison Pier is first-string middle linebacker and line guard who has been named best in the state. He is also a senior at Plano High.

"We did lose our opening game, and I certainly didn't like it," says King. "I couldn't describe the feeling when we got back."

He believes "everybody can't be winners. Somebody has to lose. But if you play football, you have to play to win. It's the only way to play the game."

Classmates have given King some special attention because he is a member of the team.

Pier, who first played football in the 7th grade and wants to play college ball next year, says he "felt sick" after the first game last fall. "We just didn't have our stuff together. After we lost, we blew it off and started the season over the next week." Pier says he has learned that, "If I give my best and get beat, I just get beat."

"All of us like to reconfirm we are something special," says Altschuler. "Football is something that becomes a matter of civic pride. I would imagine if a boy from Plano became a chess champ, it would be the same matter of civic pride. Football is a harmless way to reaffirm we are something special."

Ann Atterberry is a staff writer of The Dallas Morning News.

Sunday, January 15, 1978
Dallas Morning News
Page 121