irisheyes, my DS8 has high functioning autism and is also struggling with this, for years now. We've done several sports thinking the practice losing will help him eventually learn to cope, as well as direct teaching of good sportstamanship.. We've discovered that the social damage of the kids on his team seeing him meltdown over and over is really not worth it at this point. We feel that if he was truly "ready" he would have gotten it, So we are focusing on non-competitive sports, such as instructional swimming. We are also looking into some special needs teams because their season is shorter and its less cutthroat overall.
