I don’t know this for a fact, but I would bet that Donald Trump never coached any of his kids’ soccer, baseball or basketball teams. I say this because I think Mr. Trump has a mistaken notion of what diversity, equity and inclusion really means. I coached both my kids in multiple sports over many years, and everything I know today about diversity, equity and inclusion I learned from coaching youth sports.

Let’s start with diversity. On my daughter’s soccer and basketball teams, every year we had girls with blond hair, girls with dark hair, and at least two girls with red hair. If I had coached a few more years, I suspect we’d have had girls with pink hair or lime green hair and artfully coifed hair of colors never seen in nature on the team, and they’d have been just as welcome as everyone else on the team.

Equity? All my soccer coaching was done at the parks and rec level where there were no tryouts and the coaches were volunteers (or in some cases, if you happened to miss a parents’ meeting, were volunteered). The only rules of soccer we needed to understand was that if it moves, kick it, and if it doesn’t move, kick it until it does. At that level of play, coaches needed only a whistle and a cursory understanding of the nuances of the rule of offsides. If you wanted to play on a parks and rec league team, you got on one. My little league and youth basketball coaching experience was more limited, but still no kid was turned away if they wanted to play on a team, even those who actually didn’t really want to play on a team, but whose parents outvoted them so they played.

I learned very early in my youth soccer coaching days that most of the girls on the team just wanted to play a little soccer and have a little of fun, particularly if that fun included laughing at their coach whenever he tried to demonstrate a sophisticated soccer move, such as kicking a ball or dodging a kicked ball or hunting for his missing whistle. Winning was less important than having a good time with their friends. I therefore made sure that every girl on the team got an equal amount of playing time in every game so they all felt equally included as members of the team, even those girls who were only playing because their parents wanted them to play. I figured even if the girls didn’t really want to play, their parents deserved the chance to see their daughters on the field for as much time as every other parent saw their daughters on the field.

I suspect Mr. Trump would have seen youth sports as a zero-sum game where, for some kids to be declared winners, an equal number of kids needed to be seen as losers. But there’s much more than keeping track of winners and losers going on in youth sports. There’s exercise and fresh air and tasty treats after a game or match. There’s learning new skills and making new friends and spending time with old friends. There’s traveling to exotic new places like the Tri-Cities, Spokane and Bellingham to play soccer with other kids with different accents and different color hair and skin and jerseys. There’s that special feeling of being a part of something bigger than yourself, of giving every ounce of yourself for your teammates, of being part of something special and lasting. There’s also lots of laughter and muddy cleats and icy fields and long rides home in cars full of sprawling girls and the unforgettable aroma of dirty socks.

Trying to stay on top of the latest dumb thing our President has done has diverted many of us from noticing some of the more interesting things happening in 2025. For example, I bet you didn’t realize that 2025 is the first year that’s a square number since 1936. The square root of 2025 is 45 and the square root of 1936 is 44. The next year that’s a square number will be 2116 (46 x 46). See? Isn’t that more interesting than nonsense about reopening Alcatraz as a prison or invading Greenland?

Tom Tyner of Bainbridge Island writes a weekly humor column for this newspaper.