Preparing for Adversity Since Life Can Be Unfair
As a young man I worked as a counselor in a group home for adolescent boys that had experienced trouble with the law. The teens were from urban neighborhoods in the San Francisco Bay Area, two hours south of our rural Mendocino County facility. Most of them had been incarcerated and upon their release were sent to our location as a sort of halfway house. Their probation officers would visit them monthly to check on their progress. Their prevalent defiance, anger, and uninterest in academics presented challenges to living peacefully together While all hoped to return to their Bay Area homes, some fell back to their previous habits.
There was never a dull moment.
Our group home was called Bachmann Hill School was located between the towns of Boonville and Philo on Highway 128. The boys lived in a cluster of cottages. On an adjacent property the county had brought in some portable classrooms in which credentialed teachers taught them. As counselors, we worked 3 or 4 day shifts each week. It was a very demanding job. When I say we worked a 3 day shift, it was 72 hours straight. There were fights to break up, chores to supervise, and homework to help with. From 11 pm to 7 am a night watchman arrived to check on each boy every 15 minute minutes while we counselors slept. If a boy got out of bed, we counselors we notified so that we could deal with it.
We were always happy when we discovered things that the boys enjoyed doing, especially if it kept them engaged, gave them joy and tired them out, so that we could all sleep at night.
Many of the boys loved to play basketball and organizing games on our outdoor hoop kept them active and occupied in something positive.
I thought it might be a good distraction for them to be able to play against some of the local high school teams. I thought it would be a refreshing to get away from the facility and to do something a little different. I thought it might give them a sense of freedom while bringing us together as a team. I thought it was a long shot than anyone would agree to play us due to liability or calendaring issues.
I contacted some of the local small high school coaches to see if they might have a little availability on their schedules for us to be able to travel to their gyms to play. (Our solo outdoor basketball hoop on the property wouldn’t be sufficient to host any games.) I was pleased and surprised, frankly, that nine different coaches agreed to play us.
We were excited for our first game, but unfortunately several of our players argued with the referees when they felt the calls were unfair. Their cussing, yelling and general disrespect led to multiple technical fouls being called against us. During half-time, most of our players stepped outside to smoke cigarettes. As their coach, I wondered if I had made a mistake in setting up these competitions.
The other counselors and I discussed what to do. First of all, my assistant coach prohibited smoking during the game. He told them that seeing your opponent smoking encouraged the other team that they could outrun us.
We decided that the kids needed to get used to bad calls being made and to practice not reacting in a negative way to the referees. Referees aren’t perfect. There would certainly be times when incorrect calls would be made against us. (Of course, sometimes incorrect calls would favor us, too, but that is rarely acknowledged.)
We came up with a plan to help them practice dealing with adversity, even unfairness.
During the next practice we got the boys together to inform them that two of us counselors were going to be referees during the ensuing intrasquad practice game. We would purposely be making bad calls. Any arguing with us would result in a two shot technical and the opponent getting the ball. They had a really hard time initially. But as their arguing resulted in technicals, their teammates started telling them to knock off the complaining. It wasn’t going to do any good. The refs were not going to change their calls. They have a better chance of winning by just staying quiet and enduring. After several practices the arguing was almost extinguished.
Our next competition was a four team tournament. When the referees called fouls on our boys, whether the calls were correct or not, we just played on. There was no smoking at halftime either. We were the only team that was not assessed a technical foul.
At the award ceremony we were presented the sportsmanship trophy.
The boys, the other counselors and I were happy to take the unlikely trophy back to Bachman Hill School.
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