I coach my daughter’s basketball team. It’s a team of 9 and 10 year old girls.

They’re all in fourth grade, but we’re playing up in a fifth grade feeder league. (A feeder team is made up of girls who will all play together in that school district’s high school when they’re older). Because we’re playing girls from a grade higher than ours, it’s not unusual for our team to get crushed.

During the last three minutes of a recent crushing, the other team’s coaches had their girls do nothing but shoot three pointers. This rubbed me the wrong way, and then some.

At first, it seemed insulting. So after the game, I confronted the coach about it. He said that they did that because they didn’t want to keep piling on, and this was a way for his girls to get a chance to take three pointers – something he doesn’t otherwise allow them to do in games.

I believed him that he didn’t mean any harm by it. But I also advised him that it shows more respect to our team to keep playing hard and trying to win. We’re trying to get 28 solid minutes out of our team, and we teach them to play hard and not give up.

And even when we can all see we’re not going to win, it’s still a chance to get game experience and try some things.

In the end, I was glad I confronted him. I think we both left with a better understanding.