The mother of the family that I live with during the summer, Barbra Cataldo, attended a soccer match of one of her first grade students in mid-June.

At the match, another one of her students ran up to her and excitedly stated, “I scored three goals today, but they didn’t count.”

Confused, Cataldo replied, “What do you mean they didn’t count?”

The student answered, “We don’t keep score in our league so my goals didn’t count.”

Cataldo responded, “Life is full of winners and losers, honey. Your goals counted.”

This idea of no-score youth sports is not isolated to the southwest suburbs of Chicago in which I live. These leagues are all over the country, and they are doing an injustice to all those who participate in them.

Sports teach many lessons that are much more difficult to pass along through other means. These lessons include teamwork, dedication, perseverance, hard work leading to success and maybe most importantly, how to win and lose.

Personally, I’ve never been a good loser, but I know that I learned through the sports I’ve played in my life (football, basketball, baseball and wrestling) to use a defeat to better prepare myself for the next contest.

The lesson of winning and losing is not just applicable in sports. When a child does poorly on a test or school assignment (a loss), the child should feel the desire to do better the next time, and prepare the necessary way to do so (a win).

Furthermore, the idea of not keeping score to protect the children’s self-esteem can have the opposite effect. By the time they are three or four, children know how to count, and in every sport but golf, the team with the most points wins.

Purposely ignoring the scoreboard brings even more attention to it. As Brian McCormick, author and Director of Coaching of the Playmakers Basketball Development League said, “this is the problem with not keeping score: everyone keeps score, whether there is an official scoreboard or not…Children are not dumb; you cannot hide the result from them or their parents.”

Lisa Emendorfer, senior lecturer in the health and physical education department at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville, offers a counterpoint about the purpose of sports at the youth level.

“You have to determine the purpose of the league. If you’re going for athlete-development, then you have to keep the score. But, if the point is just to get kids active and fit, then the score does not really matter,” Emendorfer said.

Emendorfer, whose son, Logan, plays football for UW-Platteville, also said however, that at a certain age, score must be kept. “Sports replicate life. Hard work gives you the best opportunity to win, but it doesn’t always mean you’re going to,” Emendorfer said.

If parents want to shield their children from formal competition in athletics, where is the line? Competition is a major part of life that transcends sports and carries all the way through college acceptances.

Ideally not keeping score would be beneficial to a child however, shielding a child from the feelings of defeat robs them of the knowledge of how to react to one. Without knowing the negative outcomes of life, where does the motivation to succeed come from?