TOM Hanks, Madonna and Geena Davisa among others starred in the 1992 film entitled ‘In a League of their Own’, which has also recently been made into a popular television series.
It captures the introduction of women’s league baseball during the Second World War when the major leagues had all been shut down on account of the men being sent off to the war.
There was great cynicism, laughter and surprises as the stories behind the players unfold and interweave with the action on the baseball park. The teams there really were in a league of their own.
We all think that there have to be leagues in sport. Any major team sport will place teams together into leagues, giving a competition structure and a goal, while still enjoying knock-out tournaments.
Leagues will be done at provincial, national and international level, with different levels for each. Yet even in individual sports such as tennis, golf and athletics, leagues are being drawn up to provide greater longer interest.
In athletics, there is the Diamond League where individual performances throughout the season are added together to provide an overall winner in the different specialities.
In golf the newly-formed LIV Golf Tour has introduced teams into the format in a bid to make it more interesting to the players and the public.
Leagues would appear to be everyone’s answer.
- IN A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN
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The same thinking extends to school sport where people, usually groups without a background in education such as sponsors, push for leagues to be arranged, to see which school is the best.
The bottom line is that we do not need leagues in school sport. We do not need to determine which school has the best results and tops a league as school is for the children not for the school.
They need competition but do not need to have leagues as then leagues become the be-all and end-all. The sport and the competition are for the youngsters to develop, to learn, to thrive.
Interestingly, a ‘league’ is defined as being a “collection of people, countries, groups that combine for mutual protection and cooperation”, as having common goals and interests with a particular purpose.
Yet sporting leagues would not necessarily be seen as being there for mutual protection and cooperation; sporting leagues are there, not for mutual protection but for total domination, to ascertain which team is the best.
The same thinking may lurk behind what is seen as the League of Nations, in which someone once said that “A league is very well when sparrows shout but no good at all when eagles fall out.”
The big boys determine what happens.
Leagues are there for their own selfish benefit. But eagles fly alone. They are in a league of their own.
The end product of that is that teams will find themselves in a league of their own. They can be proud that they are the best but they are only the best of one! Big deal!
If they are in a league of their own, there is no competition and what use is sport if we cannot play against anyone?
So when the team finds itself in a league of its own, it will find that there is very little benefit. There is no competition because the opposition is so weak that it is no competition.
There is no-one to play against but we are the best. Of course, we all want to be seen to be the best but by becoming the best we may enter a league of our own and have no opposition.
If we at schools ‘buy’ in players from other schools with scholarships or other inducements, we may become so good that no-one will want to play our school – and pupils are left without any competition, without any fixtures, without any fun. Simply because we want to be in a league of our own.
We in schools conducting sport should be less concerned about league tables and more concerned about having a League of Schools (similar to the League of Nations), which should be concerned for the mutual protection, not of its members’ reputations but of the protection of the children and of the sport.
Sure, we would love to be seen to be in a league of our own, far ahead of others, way above all other contenders, having no worthy competition – just think of the kudos we would gain and be able to spread!
Yet if we are in a league of our own, we will soon discover how disappointing that will be, having no competition, literally or metaphorically. What is more, it follows that we will be out of their league. Do we want that? If we do, we may well also discover that there will be great cynicism, laughter and surprises at our expense, as there was in the movie.
Try pitching that!
