NEWS

WIRES

OTHER

Do Sports Teach Fair Play and Its Value?

by Tim Cox, Education Road Ltd

Spring cleaning may be a traditional passage at your home. Maybe you go to the beach during spring break, or visit relatives you seldom see. In youth baseball leagues, the spring event many of us across North America practice is the annual event called the draft. You may recognize it as a fall or winter passing since the same thing occurs if you coach football, hockey, basketball, field hockey, and all the other league sports.

I have probably participated in or administered 100 or so drafts. They are fascinating when you look deeper. On the surface, a casual observer sees loud and bickering adults fighting over kids. The next level is coaches driving to win by putting together the best team they can. The insider's look finds coaches who fear challenge by doing little preparation. They are afraid to put their best into it since failure is fully on their back. Then there are the ones allegedly doing it for the kids, along with the argumentative, the disorganized, the rookies, the indecisive, the nice, and unfortunately, the lost.

Oddly enough, there is a behavioral thread running through most of these; fair play. Parents and others seldom see it. Not super star fair play, just fair play. If a new coach, or even a returning coach, is ready to make a poor selection of a player that looked great in tryouts, other coaches will tell them. Ok. It is not perfect. The other coaches may not volunteer the insight, but if the drafting coach asks, they will be honest.

Sports should contribute to your child's developing sense of fair play. When I am participating in a draft, it seems these past athletes understand that playing fair has a value. It supports a better league if the evenly matched teams share wins and losses. A coach's sense of fair play is not created at the draft. Umpires and referees enforce rules that force fair play, but a coach's leadership can make real behavior change.
Young athletes look to coaches to guide their behavior.

Slightest nuances are quickly emulated. If a coach argues the umpire's call, the players will too. If the coach congratulates an opposing player, or even positively comments on a good play, his team sees it as an acceptable behavior, and does the same. There are nuances of fair play that are seldom noticed; a catcher picks up a bat so a running player does not trip; a tag out is missed because a second baseman does not want to tag a player in the face. Every sport has its own.

Every coach, in every sport, is a behavioral teacher. The technical aspects of a sport are vivid. You see them on every play. Fair play is not as shiny and most will never see it, but carried through life, it is a grand lesson. One that creates drivers who know what it means to merge, co-workers who will help a friend, musicians who understand harmony, and coaches who can happily draft a team. Where else do you learn that?

Timothy Cox & Education Road Ltd. copyrights this article. The owner retains all publishing rights unless otherwise agreed. twc@educationroad.com