The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the views of The Prowler.

People have argued for years on whether or not there should be blowouts in youth sports, meaning a game where the losing team has no chance of winning. Blowouts should be allowed, as they can help the kids in many ways, such as not giving up when having the lead. They teach kids how to take a loss and can encourage them to try harder in the future. 

According to a New York Times article written by Bill Welense, a high school coach got suspended because his basketball team won a game 92-4. He received backlash and was eventually suspended for one game. He publicly apologized and received both criticism and praise for apologizing. 

Another instance happened in a high school football game. The winning team won 63-13 and broke the league’s winning-by-more-than-48-points policy. The coach ended up also getting suspended for one game. 

Allowing blowouts allows for kids to learn a valuable lesson about life, that life is not fair and there won’t be any rules saying that it won’t get worse. It teaches kids that there are no handicaps in life, and that life will “go easy” on them. 

People might argue that blowouts will cause kids to stop trying and/or give up, which sometimes is the case. They also say that the sport is about having fun and blowouts will cause the kids to not enjoy the activity, which can also be true. Most of the time, however, when someone is really passionate about a sport and not willing to give up as soon as they have a bad loss, they usually try to push themselves harder and learn from their mistakes. Kids generally have more fun with a sport when they win, and having a bad loss can push them to get better and have more fun. 

Overall, sports should allow blowouts in older and more competitive sports but keep their rules for very young sports leagues. Blowouts can kill the passion for a sport when you are not playing it competitively and younger kids are probably not playing competitively. But for high school kids that are wanting to play on a college and potentially professional level, restricting blowouts causes more harm than help.