Sportsmanship

Ben is playing soccer again this fall and since his coach doesn't have an official assistant coach, I've been helping out as much as I can. I guess I've kind of become the unofficial assistant coach. At Ben's level, the coaches share reffing duties which usually consists of one coach from either team on the field to call out of bounds and goals and basically coach the team as they are playing.

Tonight Kevin (Ben's coach) asked me if I'd like to ref to get practiced up for when he was going to be out of town and needed me to take over for the game. So I took the whistle and headed out. It went pretty well and I had fun, but there were a couple of interesting incidents. During the first half, one little boy from the other team scored and then turned around and pointed in one our players faces and jeered, "You're poo!" Then he ran by another player and shook his fist in her face and taunted "Yaa! Yaa!"

I was shocked. As we were lining up to kick off I caught the little boy as he went by and stopped him. "That's not ok! We don't talk like that." I wasn't sure if or when I should say anything to the other team's coach, but then another of our players came to me upset and said that he'd fallen down and someone from the other team laughed at him. While probably not a huge deal in itself, I felt it was time to say something to the coach. I did and he appreciated that I said something and he talked with his player.

The rest of the game went pretty well, with one other small incident. I was talking with my Dad afterward and were just wondering if the boy who'd been taunting had seen that behavior somewhere before and was just imitating. As we were getting in the van I said "Good game!" to one of the opposing players as they walked by. Ben noticed and looked back to say "Bad game!"

I was floored. Now don't get me wrong, I don't think Ben's a saint, and I know that I've not always been the greatest sport in my past, but I really haven't been into them that much since Ben was born, so he hasn't seen me do that. So where'd it come from?

How much of this stuff do they learn, and how much comes from some natural human tendency? How much is malicious and how much is rejoicing gone overboard?

Most importantly, how do you teach you kids how to be good sports. Maybe it all comes in modeling good behavior, just like everything else. I don't know, but I do know that tonight sure reminded me that I've gotta be vigilant about teaching good sportsmanship to my boys. What a big responsibility!