Tessa McDonald says it’s going to be “a lot weirder” to play soccer without keeping score. But she still wants to win.

“Winning is more fun than losing, and if there’s no score, how are you going to have fun?”

The 9-year-old midfielder, who plays for the North Toronto Soccer Club’s competitive under-10 team, says she will keep score in her head this year (“as long as it’s not more than seven”), but worries her teammates might not be equally motivated if the game “doesn’t matter.”

Tessa’s league is one of many across the province that will stop keeping score and tabulating standings this season in an attempt to shift the focus of kids’ soccer away from winning and toward skills development.

Some leagues and age groups started last season, others will adopt the approach this year, and by 2014 it will be mandatory across Ontario for all competitive players under 12.

It’s part of a well-established, research-supported and holistic approach to player development, common in soccer-rich countries and endorsed by the sport’s brightest minds.

But try telling that to Canadian parents and volunteer coaches who have grown up in North America’s hypercompetitive, win-at-all costs sports culture.

“That’s the biggest challenge we face,” said John Hyland, head coach at North Toronto. “Changing the mentality, the culture.”

Despite charges that eliminating scores and standings in kids’ games will kill the competitive spirit and shelter children from the life lesson of losing, the aim of the new approach is actually to make Canadian soccer players more competitive in the long term.

“Unfortunately, when you put an overemphasis on competition, individual skill development regresses, and that’s what’s happened in our game for so long,” said Alex Chiet, the chief technical officer for the Ontario Soccer Association.

Chiet has the unenviable task of turning the tide by trying to win the hearts and minds of skeptical soccer parents and coaches across the province. “It’s a tough road to drive because we’re working against a cultural shift here.”

While critics of the new initiative wrestle with the uncomfortable change, soccer officials argue it represents a long-overdue growing up of Canadian soccer, a necessary and late adoption of international practices geared toward developing more elite players.

“It’s very much a thing you do when you know,” said Hyland, who holds a master’s degree in sport psychology and was trained as a coach in England’s Football Academy, where he said similar youth development programs are “an integral part of everything they do.”

While the lack of scorekeeping in kids’ games has garnered the most attention and stirred the most controversy, it’s just one aspect of much broader changes to youth soccer mandated by a national directive to curb early dropout and develop more skilled players.

The changes mark a major paradigm shift for a sport that has shown glimpses of promise at the national level — the bronze-medal performance of Canada’s women’s team at London 2012; Canada’s men winning the Gold Cup in 2000 — but has struggled to maintain credibility.

The new plan, dubbed “Wellness to World Cup Long-Term Player Development,” establishes a common training curriculum for all age levels and abilities, more training of volunteer coaches, increased ratio of practices to games while putting a greater emphasis on building fundamental skills.

The plan culminates in 2014 with the opening of an elite development league for older youth, from which it is hoped the national team will be drawn.

Ontario is not alone. Other provinces are either at the same stage of implementation or following closely behind.

The rationale behind taking scores and standings away in kids’ games is to have them hone their technical skills without the pressure to win.

In addition to doing away with standings, promotion and relegation, kids under 12 will play nine players aside, rather than 11, on a smaller pitch with smaller nets.

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The point is to give each player more time on the ball and encourage them to use their imagination while avoiding rigid strategic play.

“You want them to try new things in game settings without the fear of failure,” said Chiet.

Tessa’s mother, Monica McDonald, whose two other daughters also play competitive soccer, said she doesn’t scoff at the changes as much as other parents, but she’s still skeptical.

“We work so hard these days as a society to make sure any semblance of competition is removed: we don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings; we want everybody to be involved; it doesn’t matter if you win or lose. What happens when these kids get out into the real world? There are people who win and there are people who lose and that is a fact of life.

“Are we doing a disservice to our children by not allowing them the experience of losing? I don’t know the answer to that.”

McDonald, who used to coach herself, said officials are “deluded” if they really believe coaches, players and parents are not still going to secretly keep score. But after watching players as young as seven become pigeonholed and stuck in specific positions by overly competitive coaches, McDonald said she’s open to trying something that will stop that from happening.

“What I would like to see is as many kids as possible playing the sport for as long as possible.”

That’s Chiet’s goal, too.

And he says he’s not trying to take winning away from players.

“Winning is always going to be important.”

But it’s a misleading measure of success, he says, and he wants Canadian soccer players and their parents to think of the bigger picture of winning in the long term.

“We know what we’re doing is right — it’s well-researched, it’s supported — the challenge is just change. And change is hard for anyone.”