Photo Credit: NAYS
If you want to get someone in a heated conversation these days, just bring up youth sports. It used to be that you weren’t supposed to talk about religion or politics in social settings, but I think it’s safe to say that ideas about how youth sports should be run has become one of those hot-button issues. And one of the most controversial is mercy rules.
Most people are familiar with the concept: One team goes ahead of the other by a certain predetermined score, and instead of continuing, the game is either modified to end earlier or stopped altogether. The thought process for these types of rules is generally to protect players from embarrassment, but other issues need to be considered. For this article, I’m only discussing mercy rules in recreational sports.
As a sports provider, one of your most important goals in setting up leagues is to try to make the competition as equal as possible. So, if blowouts are so common that you even need a rule to deal with them, you might not be doing a good job before the season starts.