In sports, as in life, we probably shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

We admit to being a bit of a homer for Bates College athletic teams. We pull for them, especially when they’re playing against teams from outside the state.

On Oct. 25, Bates scored a 5-0 field hockey victory over Oberlin College. Bates didn’t really score five points. In fact, at halftime the Bobcats were trailing Oberlin, 2-1.

Oberlin’s coach decided during the break that the weather was too terrible for the team to continue: “We have a very big game coming up … that we have to win in order to win our league,” coach Deb Ranieri said. “We need to be as healthy as we can be for that game. It’s much more important than a non-league game for us.”

So the team quit. Oberlin forfeited, and the official score goes in the books as 5-0.

After riding on a bus all the way from Ohio, the team forfeited because it was rainy and cold.

If the game didn’t matter, if it wasn’t important, then why schedule it in the first place? Why bother with the 800-mile trip?

We tell our kids to never quit, to never give up, that perseverance matters, and that giving it your best effort matters more than winning or losing. Except, this coach says, when it doesn’t, like in the rain during a non-conference game.

Nobody wants to see an athlete get hurt, and the conditions were tough, but they weren’t any tougher for one team than for the other.

The game might not have mattered to Oberlin, but it still mattered – to Bates and probably to the players on both squads. The forfeit was a poor showing.