Sportsmanship
Sportsmanship
It was surprising and disheartening that much of the talk following last weekend’s NFL conference championships centered on two acts of questionable sportsmanship. Following his loss to the Broncos, Patriots Coach Bill Belichick lamented a play by Broncos receiver Wes Welker, who, according to Belichick, deliberately attempted to take one of the Patriots’ defensive players out of the game with a dirty play. Debate ensued as to whether Belichick’s complaint was a case of “sour grapes” and therefore poor sportsmanship, or a legitimate effort to call attention to the offensive “pick” play that is simultaneously against the rules and puts defensive players at risk. Even more famously now, Seattle Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman went on a rant in a postgame interview after making what proved to be the game-winning defensive play in the endzone against the 49ers. Calling his opponent mediocre, Sherman went on to extol his own greatness and challenge anyone who would dare question it. Since then, his overly scrutinized and much replayed comments have led to Sherman being called everything from an ungracious winner, to a reporter’s dream (for his overtly unscripted commentary), to a misunderstood Stanford grad, to a marketing genius, to a “thug,” which Sherman has since claimed reflects blatant racism. In all of this, what is forgotten is that the two championship games were just that--games, and entertaining ones at that. But in professional sports these days, the stakes are so high that it is no wonder that some players and coaches lose their cool in the heat of the moment or even later in reflecting on what happened. Winning and losing matters so much that the fundamentals of sportsmanship often become casualties.
Meanwhile, most folks in town are excited that the Broncos have had an incredible season. Led by Sports Illustrated’s Sportsman of the Year, Peyton Manning, the Broncos have generally won with offensive flair and professional class. But the team has had its share of on- and off-field drama as well this year, overcoming star pass rusher Von Miller’s drug-related suspension and then injury, the drunk driving arrests of two team executives, Coach John Fox’s heart surgery, and numerous injuries to other key players. In the end these obstacles seem to have helped the team come together, with the “next man up” philosophy fueling the inspired play of previously unheralded players and veteran castoffs from other teams.
Sportsmanship has also hit closer to home in recent days. Our varsity boys’ basketball team has been ranked in the Top 5 of 3A all year and is currently #2-ranked and undefeated. Three of our sophomore players were featured in a flattering channel 9 news story last weekend. Last weekend the team played Manual High School, once a basketball powerhouse in the state, now enduring harder times. With our team leading by as many as 50 points in the second half, some wondered if we were being poor sports by not backing off, holding the ball, playing our substitutes more, etc. It’s always a fine line in lopsided games like that. A team risks looking condescending or patronizing if the players take the foot off the gas too soon; but they also take the chance of looking mean-spirited if they continue to pour it on. Coach Hyatt played his bench in the fourth quarter but the final score of 83-39 still indicated a rout. In basketball, unlike many other sports, players continue to move up and down the court and eventually someone has to shoot. Should there be a mercy rule of some sort that allows for one team to lose more mercifully? Should it matter that we have been on the receiving end of equally one-sided scores? These and other questions naturally came to the fore in the wake of the game.
We had the chance to test our sportsmanship in a different way a few days later when our varsity girls’ team was on the short end of a 46-point loss to Peak to Peak, ranked third in the state. In speaking to Coach Engel about the game, he had already moved on, appropriately, to thinking about what had been learned in the game and how the girls would bounce back from the defeat. He said nothing about the other team being bad sports because they blew us out; he was more concerned about the fact that our girls turned the ball over too much in the first quarter. That gave him something concrete to work on in the next practice.
An easy win or a lopsided loss: both outcomes provided opportunities for student growth and direct conversations about the nature and spirit of competition. I’m pleased that our students and coaches handled their situations with more grace than Belichick or Sherman did.
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