April means that it's tournament time for a lot of my high school friends. The thing about high school tournaments is that it's a very mixed bag. You could face an opponent who has no clue what they are doing, or you could face someone who is a national champion.
I was talking to my friends about back in the day (har har) when I competed in high school. My comment was that my only regret was the fact that I hit many of my opponents. While that isn't a bad thing (it happens), i'm certainly not proud of doing it.
One of my friends commented "don't you feel bad for destroying everyone you played?" What she meant was that back in high school, especially my last year, I was rather dominant in my region. Or more accurately, no one had a bloody chance against me. Her point was that it was rather unfriendly to go all out on someone who has no chance of winning, and it would likely turn them away from the sport. This girl is by no means a stranger to competition. She has reached as far as the semi finals at nationals.
My feelings are that if you're at a competition, then you'd better expect the possibility of getting 0 points. One of my other friends agreed. In fact, she has finished an entire tournament giving up a total of only 5 points. I guess it helps that she's a former national champion.
I'd like to list this as situation 1. Just plain old, do you go all out against weak competition? Please feel free to apply this to things other than sports.
The 2nd situation, was one that the first friend mentioned. She mentioned that her school's coach tells her not to give others 0 points even if she is able.
I've been in that kind of situation. My school's coach didn't mind when I gave the opponent 0's, but she let me know jokingly that I didn't have to win by that much all the time.
In one case, the coach of my opponent actually lectured me saying that it wasn't sportsman like to win by so much. My answer was simple "this is a competition, I am here to win. Hopefully, so are your students. If they aren't, then they should just leave now." He was pretty unhappy about my answer to say the least, but that coach was just pissed that I helped my team to beat his team when we were losing.
So the 2nd situation is, in a school setting (or any somewhat more relaxed setting), would you still go all out? I think you'd have to apply this to sports, but if you can find a way to apply it in other ways (competitive math anyone?
), feel free.