When did a "try hard" become a negative?

Tell those kids that they're trying too hard at being a$$holes.

It came from "e-sports" where a lot of players are just casual people trying to have fun and obsessive nerds with poor emotional control or social skills would shriek over the mic at their randomly selected team for ruining their scores (The nerds with social skills make friends so they play with pre established teams on their main accounts and don't stress about throw-aways).

Essentially a complaint about people playing serious in a casual environment. For instance no one respects the guy who goes HAM at a family kickball game.

Then bottom feeders took it and ran with it as an excuse for why they don't succeed at anything.

Yep I basically do when we go over results and the non try hards don't make page 1 of the results.

Mickey Mantle gave Pete Rose the name "Charlie Hustle" as an insult.

Bettingfool wrote:

Any coaches or PE teachers have issues with lazier athletes or students calling your hard working kids a "try hard" as an insult. It's become a popular put down at my school for kids who work hard in PE or athletes who work hard or attend optional weekend workouts. It's not a big deal but I've heard it daily for the last few months and I don't ever remember hearing before. I'm at a middle school with a no cut xc program and many kids are just there cause they get cut from everything else and want to be on a team or the parents want them there for various reasons including free day care.

Try Hard should be an insult in PE past elementary school.

It should not be an insult on a team.

Yeah, I first heard this a couple of years ago.

My response is to really praise effort from the slower, back of the pack type of kids. We have a team break every day and I and the coaches always try to have a quick pow-wow as to which kid had the best workout relative to his/her ability level. That kid then gets to lead the team break.

I have a whole team of try hards now and I feel pretty good about it.

CoachB wrote:

Yeah, I first heard this a couple of years ago.

My response is to really praise effort from the slower, back of the pack type of kids. We have a team break every day and I and the coaches always try to have a quick pow-wow as to which kid had the best workout relative to his/her ability level. That kid then gets to lead the team break.

I have a whole team of try hards now and I feel pretty good about it.

There is a kid on my son’s XC team that is always last and is really slow, improving but slow. He works his ass of and really gives full effort. You can tell he’s genuinely hurting. He’s not doing it for show so he can be Rudy.

The team loves him. Also, he’s quite stocky and strong and could probably beat the s#it out of the very skinny top five runners at the same time.

That’s a funny think about XC. The biggest and baddest are the slowest. And the guys who look like they are on the chess team are the “studs”.

John Utah wrote:

There is a kid on my son’s XC team that is always last and is really slow, improving but slow. He works his ass of and really gives full effort. You can tell he’s genuinely hurting. He’s not doing it for show so he can be Rudy.

The team loves him. Also, he’s quite stocky and strong and could probably beat the s#it out of the very skinny top five runners at the same time.

Right answer. To borrow a worn-out phrase, "Do or do not. There is no try."

Trying is what people do when they are too invested in the outcome.

Do.

Not Do.

Nothing else.

pop_pop!_v2.2.1 wrote:

John Utah wrote:

There is a kid on my son’s XC team that is always last and is really slow, improving but slow. He works his ass of and really gives full effort. You can tell he’s genuinely hurting. He’s not doing it for show so he can be Rudy.

The team loves him. Also, he’s quite stocky and strong and could probably beat the s#it out of the very skinny top five runners at the same time.

Right answer. To borrow a worn-out phrase, "Do or do not. There is no try."

Trying is what people do when they are too invested in the outcome.

Do.

Not Do.

Nothing else.

Do what?

I think kids avoid trying hard to somehow preserve a false sense of intelligence or ability. If they actually try, and then fail, it shatters their little psyche.

I don't remember this attitude among my peers growing up. Even the P.E. weekly 1.5 mile run was lit. Bunches of guys in every period of PE would run under 9 minutes for 1.5 miles and they weren't on any athletic teams. I look at P.E. classes where I teach and barely see any kids running under 8 min for a mile.

That attitude was around in the 80s

Agreed. It's not a generational thing. There's always been a$sholes around.

Air PEGasus wrote:

That attitude was around in the 80s

The "go hards" are more respected.

Bettingfool wrote:

Any coaches or PE teachers have issues with lazier athletes or students calling your hard working kids a "try hard" as an insult. It's become a popular put down at my school for kids who work hard in PE or athletes who work hard or attend optional weekend workouts. It's not a big deal but I've heard it daily for the last few months and I don't ever remember hearing before. I'm at a middle school with a no cut xc program and many kids are just there cause they get cut from everything else and want to be on a team or the parents want them there for various reasons including free day care.

TRY is a negative word. So it's always been negative to say TRY HARD.