11
2013
Competition for who?
An article by Stephen Pritchard
Having run a series of district and County competitions over the past month I have a few observations to share.
At at a Primary school County Final event, having played group stages we reached the stage whereby the County Champion would be crowned. I had organised the event in such a way that every team would have the same number of fixtures and be involved right until the end of the day. So, the final was played at the same time as the 3rd/4th play off, 5th/6th play off, and 7th/8th play off. As I strolled around the matches I observed that the children who were the most animated and noisiest were those playing in the 5th/6th and 7th/8th play offs (whilst staff quietly watched and kept score). I also observed that the staff and parents who were most animated and noisiest were those officiating and watching the final and the 3rd/4th play off (whilst the players did what they were told and made more errors than they had in previous games).
Having inherited (for want of a better word) the competitions I received a lot of feedback about the need to display results and league tables for the children to know where they were as had been done in previous years. All of these requests came from adults, none from the children themselves! I wonder whether the players at this stage in their careers were bothered with the outcome?
Some events had awkward numbers of teams meaning there were times when teams could have sat out, but I arranged “friendly” fixtures in between. At one such event there was some confusion and a staff member was put out that they had played a “weaker reserve” player in a match which “counted”. I wonder what would have happened to this reserve player if all matches had “counted”.
We are of course stuck in the quandary where events have to have winners and progression to encourage staff or schools to enter, but where we want to increase and encourage participation and more importantly enjoyment amongst children. I think it is possible to achieve both, but this is dependant upon how we define success and how this message is shared with the players.
