Sportsmanship is a Way of Life
January 4, 2013
Twenty years ago the MHSAA received a plaque from a member school that I continue to prize above all other awards our organization has received. The plaque reads: “In recognition of outstanding contributions to interscholastic athletics, and for promotion of sportsmanship as a way of life for all young athletes.”
There are no words I would more prefer to describe the work of the MHSAA then and now than those highlighted words. No work we do is any more important than promoting sportsmanship as a way of life. Reduced to a phrase, that’s our most essential purpose; that’s our product.
Not victories, titles or championships, but sportsmanship. Not awards or records, but sportsmanship.
It’s teaching and learning sportsmanship more than speed and strength; sportsmanship more than coordination and conditioning; sportsmanship more than skills and strategies. Even more than teamwork, hard work, discipline and dedication, it’s sportsmanship we teach and learn.
In Discovery of Morals, the sociologist author (not a sportsman) writes, “Sportsmanship is probably the clearest and most popular expression of morals. Sportsmanship is a thing of the spirit. It is timeless and endless; and we should strive to make it universal to all races, creeds and walks in life.”
Sportsmanship is more than a list of do’s and don’ts; more than grace in victory and defeat; more than how we play the game and watch the games. It’s how we live our lives.
Sportsmanship begins in our homes. We work on it in practice. It extends to games. It reaches up to the crowd. It permeates the school halls and shopping malls. And it begins to affect society for good, or for bad.
Current Events
November 3, 2017
This is the ninth year that I have been posting blogs twice a week – each Tuesday and Friday. A recent project required I go back through the postings of the eight previous years; and a sidebar of that project is this posting.
I rediscovered that in the fall of 2009, I was writing about topics that remain current today. For example,
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August 18 – What new sports may be in the future of high school athletics?
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August 25 – The prospects of 8-player football.
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September 4 – Baseball pitching rules.
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September 8 – Video streaming.
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October 6 – Protection from head injuries.
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November 17 – Foreign students.
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November 20 – Football scheduling.
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November 27 – Football Playoffs.
And on several occasions over the first six months, the topics were problems in school finance and the financial pressures on school sports, reasons for various eligibility rules, changes in playing rules to promote participant safety, tournament classification, and the need for stronger leadership on all levels of school sports.
All of these topics remain current. Proving once again, perhaps, that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Or, that there are no genuinely new topics.