207-27 score: ‘utterly ridiculous’

A massive 207-27 thrashing dealt to a Taranaki high school team this week should not have happened, says veteran basketball coach Steve McKean.

The former New Zealand men’s coach described the score in Wednesday’s game between Palmerston North Boys’ High School and Hawera High School as ‘‘utterly ridiculous.’’

Both teams are taking part in the zone three national secondary school qualifying championships this week.

‘‘I couldn’t believe it, I thought it was a misprint, you don’t see scores like that,’’ McKean, also former regional sports director with the Taranaki Secondary School Sport Association, said.

‘‘With scores like that neither team gets anything out of it. The winning team isn’t going to gain anything and the losing team are not going to want to play the game again after that hiding. I can’t believe it. That’s a score you just don’t see.’’

He saw a need for a ‘mercy rule’ in the game similar to that in baseball in the USA, where a game is declared over when the gap reaches a certain point.

Good support would lessen the effect of the loss on the Hawera players, although it was still likely to be discouraging, Dr Warrick Wood, sports psychology lecturer at Massey University in Albany, said.

‘‘My approach is winning a game doesn’t always mean success and losing a game doesn’t inherently reflect failure. It all comes back to gauging success as ‘did we perform as well as we could?’ Going forward that’s a much healthier mindset, essentially that’s the only thing in your control.’’

Palmerston North coach Miles Pearce defended his team’s approach to play as hard as possible and score so many points – despite it often being seen as unsporting and unnecessary in school sport.

Hawera High School could not be reached for comment.