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February 2022 #14271 Page #68
Business Competition and Childhood Sportsmanship
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By Don Groom
or many of us, one of our favorite parts of childhood was playing in sports. It taught us many lessons about life, including teamwork, sportsmanship, competition, and being the best you can be each day.
Every day on the playground, at every elementary school I ever went to, the first thing we would do was pick teams and play a game. The two captains for the day would flip a coin to see who picked first, while everyone else lined up and waited to be chosen. The best athletes would always be picked first, but on any given day the teams would be different depending on who were the captains and who won the flip. One day you could be on the team with the best mix of talent, and the next day you could be on the team that had a more difficult struggle to come out on top. Either way, you took the field and played as hard as you could, always striving to find a way to win. Sometimes you won and sometimes you didn’t, but no matter what the outcome, the next day you were back on the field, campaigning hard to be a captain so you could pick a team or doing all you could to be picked by the captain of the team you wanted to play with. Getting mad when you lost or bragging about winning that particular day was not something you did. That kind of behavior never went over very well with your classmates; besides, you could be sure that your day was coming when you would be on the losing side and not want to hear about it! Most kids just enjoyed the win for the day or handled the loss without throwing a glove or kicking and screaming. We just accepted the outcome, learned from the loss, and played the game the next day with everything we had in us. When we grew up competing in sports, we knew that, after the game, the winner would be rewarded and the loser would go home to figure out how to win the next game. But, it was more than that, because good sportsmanship didn’t end when the game ended. You knew: •
If the loser got mad or threw things, he’d be labeled a sore loser.
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If the winner gloated and stuck his chest out, he’d be labeled an arrogant, prideful winner.
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