Kids & scores?

I was watching my kid's last day of tennis "camp" yesterday and had to laugh at the coaches. They were working with a group of kids ages 4 - 7. They were trying to get some energy out of the kids and decided to team the girls up against the boys. They didn't seem to realize that doing this, then keeping score, would work only to a point. After a bit, they had to try to "temper" it down and told the kids to simply try their best. However, they were still KEEPING SCORE. I'm sorry, but there's a fundamental issue here. You CANNOT (with this age group, probably with others) tell them to just try their best and not worry about the score and then KEEP SCORE. If you want them to just try their best, you can't even START the score. You're just setting yourself up for failure in the process.

What happened here was that the kids kept trying too hard and thus were missing the shots the coaches were trying to get them to make. This frustrated the kids (or a couple of them, anyway).

So, coaches.. take note. It's a contradiction to try to tell the kids to NOT worry about the score when you've set them up to compete to win. For the most part, it's just not going to happen.