Whose Fault Is It Anyway?

     I have been involved in athletics for around forty years starting out as a little league right fielder ( baseball wasn't my strong suit), participating in wrestling and cross country in high school, and then as a coach for the majority of my life, approximately thirty-one years. What time I wasn't directly "in the game" I have been a spectator at athletic competitions on all levels, pee-wee through professional, developmental and competitive and in almost every setting possible. There is a common theme that pervades the outcome of competitions when the score on the scoreboard doesn't necessarily go in favor of our team. In too many instances the "blame" for a loss sits directly in the lap of the referee or the scandalous techniques of the other team that cheated their way to victory. My proposal today is that we all sit back and reflect on what we are teaching our children and others when we point the finger of blame in the direction of someone else in these game like situations? Is this the proper approach to teach personal accountability and responsibility? In my mind it is directly counter intuitive to what we should desire for those that are learning how to conduct themselves from our words and actions.
     I distinctly remember an elementary school ball game where a parent had to be escorted out of the gym because he was almost in a rage over what he perceived as a number of "bad" calls that were being made against his child's team. After the game was over, which our team won by the way, it is almost certain that if you had walked up to this athletic team supporter ( the word supporter is being used loosely) and asked him why his child's team lost that game the response would emphatically be that "the referees lost that game for them ". I feel it is pertinent that I impart a little of my own disclaimer at this point.
      I have stepped into the other side of that equation over the last few years and donned the whistle and stripped shirt of a referee. I will be the first to admit I have botched some calls and probably some that were made at game point in the third set that ended one team's comeback and sealed the deal for the winning team. At no point have I ever intentionally made a call or missed a call in an effort to help or hurt a team. Refereeing is hard and if you want a better appreciation for the job that a referee does sign up to become one and see how the shirt feels on the other side! Enuf said. Back to today's FTM.
     The mentality that any victory is directly related to our efforts and abilities, while any loss is adversely directly related to the calls that the referee made or didn't make, or even worse creating a scenario where the other team "cheated" to win is a treacherous road to travel when molding mindsets for life whether it be our children or our "fan base". Personal responsibility or accountability has always been a teaching point for me as a coach both to my athletes and to my athlete's parents. I won't allow my kids to blame the referee for a loss due to what is perceived to be a bad call or several bad calls. I tell them that if that one call or if one person not playing the game controlled the outcome of the game then we didn't do our job of taking care of business. One play or person could not have beaten us. We are responsible for the outcome of the game, match, or results. One of the most important skills we can foster in sports and in life is personal accountability.
     There's an old saying about pointing a finger at someone else that when we do so there are three fingers pointing back at us. When accountability is accepted and expected the outcome becomes so different. Instead of just looking at the end result we each can look at and analyze our input in comparison to the output at the end of the day. To teach this life skill to our children in athletics or in any other area of life we have to model it just as we model our expectations in other areas of our daily walk. Working hard in practice, focusing on the task at hand, being persistent in our efforts, and learning from mistakes instead of making excuses for them are all contributing factors in learning to be accountable. If we teach our proteges to take ownership of their education, their game, their mistakes, or their own efforts, and we teach them to give credit to others for the team effort win or lose we are taking steps toward teaching them to take personal responsibility for their own journey in life.  If parents, coaches, teachers, politicians, and others in leadership roles step up to set high expectations, coupled with an emphasis on teaching personal accountability for those they are leading the end result will be success without a doubt! The score on the scoreboard may tell who won the game, but the score doesn't show the real winner, that  comes later in life! Teach' em to own it! Good or bad it's theirs and they are responsible for what they do with it!
Have a great week!