Problems With Competition

Everyone knows what happens when opponents get together and duke it out, or when a bunch of groups get together and fight for the top. There are always feelings of unfair play, biased judging, or predestined winners. Why can't we all just get together and give our best to see what happens without a million irrelevant subliminal factors influencing the outcome or our reaction to it?

Just yesterday there was a huge marching band competition at Mountain View, with upwards of 20 different bands there varying in size from 39 to 262 members. As many of us know, American Fork has a tradition of musical exellence. It just so happens that they put together the whole competition, chose the judges, found the awards, and made sure everything went smoothly. It also just so happens that they got first place, sweeping all the other side, or 'caption' awards as well in their class. Everyone immediately began to state that, "It was rigged." How could that just happen?

Humans are built in such a way that we get excited during competition. We never like to be on the losing side. Who does? Therefore, we are quick to rationalize loss by factors we are unable to control. "The judges are biased...They performed last..." We rarely say, "They deserved it, so let's work harder next time!" Even if there are politics involved and the competition exists only for second place, competitors can still receive satisfaction and self-fulfillment from doing their very best. It's true that the last time that American Fork did not win first at a competition in Utah the whole crowd (which happened to be more than 50% AF fans) went crazy and boo-ed their disapproval. It's also true that since them, AF has always one first place no matter what. It's also true that they are a very good band. If numbers and placings are the only things that matter then no one will ever be satisfied with the fact that they didn't win when they probably never will.

If all competitions were fair, judged by robotic and completely unbiased machine-like things, then winning would be a valid goal because it would encourage people to do their very best and they would be judged according to that. However, competition is not, and never will be fair. There will always be the pressure of the crowd, the "I didn't see that mistake, but oh well," and the "Well, I just don't like them" within judging.

Our band took second place in our division yesterday, creating the best results that Orem High School has ever seen, coming within 1.25 points out of 100 of the band that consistently beat us by a minimum of 7 points last year. The interesting thing was, we felt we didn't give our best. We knew we could have and should have done better, and that's all that mattered until someone asked the director "how close we were to the other bands." Points do not motivate people to do better. Competition motivates people to do better, but only the competition to the very best you can. A first place trophy isn't a motivator, because what if a group gets first and is satisfied? Nothing. Nothing will happen because there is no desire to get better. We can't let go of the minor imperfections in competition because of the numbers they produce. If we can let go of the numbers and cling to our personal accomplishment, the spirit of competition will be greatly enhanced.