In the modern world of specialized youth sports the end often justifies the means.
We watch on TV as Barry Bonds is applauded by complicit baseball fans for breaking a 33-year-old home run record while a cloud of steroid speculation hangs over his head.
The price Bonds paid for his success is a future of dangerous health risks, unfortunate bodily changes, and the fact that history will remember him for being a fraud. Unfortunately for honest people, Bonds still will have reaped incredible economic and professional success from his misdeeds.
Curt Marsh spoke to the athletes at Darrington High School in an effort to curb the all-or-nothing mentality that so pervades American sports. The Aug. 13 event coincided with registration for Darrington Fall sports as the school brought in Marsh, of University of Washington and NFL fame, to speak to their young athletes.
Marshs message was one of remembering to put sports in proper perspective. He told a story about a young bicyclist striving to win an Olympic medal for the United States. The cyclist set an American record with her time at the Olympics, though her result only garnered her eighth place at the competition. Immediately following the race a television journalist rushed up to interview her. The first words out of his mouth were, What went wrong for you today?
In a country that merely expects to win at everything, eighth place is not enough to capture our attention. Marsh railed against this type of thinking that so pervades our culture.
Its only a short jump from that mentality to the mentality that cheating to win is okay, Marsh said. More than 99 percent of high school athletes will not receive a scholarship to play at any NCAA accredited school, divisions one, two or three.
Marsh went on to talk about the huge benefits of growing up in a small community like Darrington.
You have something here that is very special, he praised. And that is the ability to play more than one sport. In an era of one-sport specialization at large high schools, small schools still need kids to play multiple sports from a sheer numbers perspective.
Marsh railed against the win-at-all-costs mentality that pervades youth sports.
Sports should be about preparing young men and women to compete at life. Because for the great majority of you, your competitive careers will be over at 18 years of age. What you can take from the experiences, is the will to win in life. The will to go out and do the right things.
Coming from a man that spent his whole career using hard work and determination to make himself a great athlete, the words really sunk in.