Time for new ground rules
Star athletes must step up to the plate
when it comes to influencing youngsters
Retired baseball star Mark McGwire became
a national hero when he broke the single-season
home run record in 1998. But at congressional
hearings last month, he broke down in tears
and refused to answer questions about whether
he got help from a syringe.
In San Francisco, girls who play high school
soccer were told not to line up after games
to give their opponents high-fives anymore.
The school district’s athletics director
banned the show of sportsmanship last month
because the girls were not being especially
sportsmanlike. Some were taking the opportunity
to get back at their opponents by whacking
their hands as hard as they could, calling
them names, even spewing obscenities. The
ban has since been rescinded after a flurry
of publicity.
They were only mirroring their role models.
For example, there was the Pennsylvania man
who was convicted of assault in February
for body-slamming a referee at his son’s
youth basketball game because the official
had ejected his wife for yelling obscenities
from the stands. And the Illinois man who
was sentenced to jail in February and banned
from attending any sports events for two
years for trying to choke a referee at his
son’s high school football game in 2003.
Then there was the man who was ejected from
the stands because the umpire thought he
had spit a sunflower seed at him during a
youth-league game in Colorado last summer.
That man was Roger Clemens, the 300-game-winning
pitcher for the Houston Astros. He was later
absolved of any blame, but the publicity
the incident drew illustrated the spotlight
that shines on misbehavior by famous athletes
— even if only alleged.
These are not isolated incidents. SportingKid
magazine found in 2003 that 84 percent of
more than 3,300 parents, coaches, youth sports
administrators and youngsters it surveyed
had witnessed “parents acting violently (shouting,
berating, using abusive language).” The National
Association of Sports Officials, meanwhile,
says it gets two to three reports a week
of adult violence at youth sports events.
It now offers assault insurance for referees.
Assessing the value of sports
Incidents like these long ago raised the
debate over whether youth sports teach children
to compete honorably and gracefully, or just
to win at all costs.
It is a debate that ethicists and sports
administrators say is overdue for a revisit,
and quickly, while disenchantment with sports
is at its peak amid congressional hearings
into baseball players’ use of anabolic steroids,
the cancellation of the National Hockey League
season and the brawl in the stands at a National
Basketball Association game in Detroit.
“What is the value of sports to our society?”
asked Robert E. Troutwine, a psychology professor
at William Jewell College in Liberty, Mo.,
and author of “The Handbook of Athletics:
Winning with Wisdom.” Troutwine administers
character assessment tests to more than 500
collegiate players who could be chosen in
the National Football League draft and consults
with nearly two-thirds of the league’s teams.
“Should athletes be held to a higher standard?
A lot of that depends on your philosophical
view of the value of athletics to our society,”
he said. If sports is only entertainment,
then it’s illogical to expect athletes to
behave better than their peers, but “if you
believe the real value of sports is that
it builds character, to me it’s obvious that
the answer is yes, we need to hold them to
a higher standard.”
CONTINUED: Playing to win in life
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