Happily, my daughter swept her swim meet yesterday, winning firsts in the breast stroke, freestyle (Australian Crawl), and the back stroke. However, one of the fathers from the opposing team began issuing a litany of stupid challenges. He demanded to see my daughter’s birth certificate, wanted the accuracy of the stop watches verified, etc. All these issues were addressed, but then this guy got ugly. I heard him tell his own daughter that because my wife and daughter are dark, that my daughter had a genetic advantage (I cleaned up the language here). At that point, I talked to this guy, personally, man-to-man; you get the idea. But after this incident I began to wonder if I were the one with the skewed perspective. I always take my daughter for ice-cream after a meet, and I always tell her that I am proud of her performance. Summarily, I never really discuss whether or not she won. I simply tell her that doing her best (at whatever she does) is what is really important. Am I missing something that other parents already know? Am I downplaying the importance of athletics for kids? How important are kids’ sports?

Ratings Rating Total Female Male Average Age Good 11 6 5 43.7 Bad 1 1 0 N/A No Opinion 21 12 9 32.3

Qualifiers:
User	Vote	Comment
ausfox	needs work	posted 10-Jul-2008 6:12am     Needs option and perhaps not such a long description of this event
they	reasonable	posted 10-Jul-2008 12:13am
Strider	reasonable	posted 9-Jul-2008 11:25pm
Melf	reasonable	posted 9-Jul-2008 3:37pm
Crayons	reasonable	posted 9-Jul-2008 2:17pm
Biggles	reasonable	posted 9-Jul-2008 1:02pm     I'm sure you could come up with some broad options, but essay is okay too
paulyw	reasonable	posted 9-Jul-2008 11:42am
Galomorro	reasonable	posted 9-Jul-2008 11:06am
LJD	reasonable	posted 9-Jul-2008 9:33am