Team sports are an excellent way for kids to learn how to work together to achieve a common goal. Even more importantly, sports present a chance for them to learn to win and lose gracefully. But as taunting touchdown dances, brushback baseball fights and camera-hogging basketball slam dunks dominate nightly sportscasts it would seem to some kids that there are things more important than sportsmanship.
Sportscenter Meets the Kids on the Playground – Negative Athletics
Watching kids play football during recess at a small town elementary school, one is drawn in at first by the youthful excitement of the game being played with loosely interpreted rules. No offsides, no huddle, everyone go deep. But then somebody crosses the imaginary goal line, and the Randy Moss-style touchdown dance begins. Slowly, the game can be seen creeping away from innocent exuberance to in-your-face taunting. The two-hand-tag is applied with a little shove, and the bigger kids lord their size advantage over the smaller ones. Before recess is over, teachers find themselves switching from the role of observer to referee to bar-fight bouncer.
It would be easy to blame this evolution of behavior on sports highlights shows like Sportscenter, where individual athletes are singled out not only for their achievements on the field but how they celebrate those achievements. Terrell Owens signs a football with a pen hidden in his sock. Manny Ramirez admires a ball hit to the moon while still standing in the batters box. Countless basketball players tug their jerseys and flex their muscles after shoving the ball almost literally down an opponent's throat. After such behaviors are repeated ad naseum night after night, it's little wonder that kids may start to think that's the proper reaction to sports achievement. But blaming it all on TV and pro-athletes is taking the easy way out.
Better Sportsmanship Begins Off the Playing Field
Talking to kids about the behavior they see on highlight reels is a big step in helping them grow up to be respectful adults. But it would be an even greater help if more adults displayed respectful behavior towards each other day to day. Frequently, we hear of "Hockey Moms" (and Dads) behaving badly in the stands. So it becomes little wonder that such intense seriousness about a child's game spills over onto the playing field. Many schools and youth sports organizations have parents sign agreements at the beginning of a season saying that they will cheer politely for both sides or they won't be allowed at games.
Yet on the way to and from the games, a lot of parents find themselves driving like they're in a NASCAR event, racing to get to the next stoplight before someone else and complaining angrily about the competition of daily life. Grown-ups often forget that the lessons taught to children are undercut when they act like such lessons don't apply to them. If kids are expected to learn about working together during team sports, parents and other adults should emulate what that behavior looks like in the "real world."
More Resources for Teaching Sportsmanship
There are a lot of great resources available for parents, teachers and coaches about this subject. Check out the sportsmanship article at Kid's Health or at Kid's Source online.
