Sportsmanship?

Ok, what is sportsmanship? Being friendly in competition? Handshakes after a game? Playing in a clean and effective manner to win a certain game? Those all sound like legitimate, reasonable, acceptable ways to describe it. What you don’t see associated with sportsmanship in any sport is lowering your level of play to give the other team a fair shot, throwing out your preparation and hard work to accommodate the lack of preparation of the other team. No one in sports has ever said “I should stop trying my hardest because the other guy isn’t as good”. Even the official definition “sportsmanlike conduct, as fairness, courtesy, being a cheerful loser, etc.” gives no hint of lowering your level of play and energy as being part of sportsmanship. Well I guess some people have a completely different explanation of sportsmanship.
            According to the school board and superintendent at Pikeville Independent middle school in Kentucky sportsmanship does include giving up and not trying your hardest. At the Pike County Preseason Tournament recently Pikeville middle school won a game 100-2, drawing the conclusion that they played too hard and shouldn’t have and in turn may have the rest of their season canceled due to lack of “sportsmanship”. This isn’t a rare case either, I usually run across three or four stories a month of a lopsided victory turned into something much more. This is not unsportsmanlike in anyway, there was no one pointing at the other team laughing, no one bragging about the score, no one showboating, it was one team who played hard for four periods and another team who somehow could not score more than one basket all day.
           To tell the kids of that school that it was unsportsmanlike for them to play hard the entire game is an embarrassment and is sending the wrong message. I’m sure they have all heard many times from school endorsed speakers, teachers, coaches, parents, media outlets, etc.. to always try their hardest, and now the same people are saying not to. If you are in a workplace and your fellow employees are working at a level much lower than your own should you now work down to accommodate their lack of dedication? I mean it would certainly be “unprofessional” to continue working better than them. What about those who join the military, should they not give their all because they are going against an enemy who aren’t as well equipped and trained as they are? Should the University of Oxford fire their professors because they are better instructors that elementary school instructors? The answer, I’m sure, is a resounding no. So why tell these kids their season is cancelled because they refused to stop trying? It wasn’t even like Pikeville tried to end the game with a 98 point victory. Before the first period was two minutes in the score was 25-0, at which point Pikeville pulled all of its starters and stopped using a full court press. What else could be done? Just stand on the sideline and let the other team get open shots at their hearts content? Stop babying kids, it’s a sport, people are bound to lose, sometimes that includes losing big. Sports are a competition, we are taught from a young age to always go your hardest the entire time, stop trying to throw exceptions into that. The world would actually be a lot better off if everyone would give one hundred percent into everything they do. This victory shouldn’t be perceived as an insult to the other team but an inspiration. If being dismantled by 98 points doesn’t make your ass want to get in the gym and practice full speed then maybe they shouldn’t be playing basketball. If people don’t want sports to be sports anymore than stop having them. If your team doesn’t want to play and can’t play against competition then don’t play.