Sportsmanship Solution Working

Overview

Read a headline in any major sports media outlet today, and it seems inevitable that an athlete is in the news for all the wrong reasons. Issues both on and off the field continue to have high school and college administrators looking for an answer that provides practical solutions related to sportsmanship.

Time after time, when those either directly related to the incident or in a position to hold others accountable are asked to provide an explanation as to why the incident happened or what course of action they plan to take the response seems to be, "It was the other team", "I don't know what happened", "we pride ourselves on sportsmanship", or "we don't teach that around here."

Leaving administrators and coaches to focus on the same questions, "What is sportsmanship?" "How do we teach it?"

It is in answering this dilemma that STAR Sportsmanship was conceived, aiming to provide athletic administrators to proactively tackled the sportsmanship issue, instead of reacting to further incidents down the road.

The purpose of this report is to outline the role that STAR Sportsmanship has played in aiding the reduction of ejections among interscholastic athletic programs following a mandated implementation of the STAR learning system in three southern states - Alabama, Mississippi and Texas.

The Issues

Administrators in these states took a proactive, widespread approach, focused on innovation and they came to the conclusion that if their associations continue to do the same things in defining and teaching sportsmanship they should expect to get the same results.

Steve Savarese, Executive Director of the AHSAA and Dr. Ennis Proctor of the MHSAA said it was time to try something new.

The state board of education in each state backed them and implemented a proactive education approach that put athletes and coaches in situations before they face them.

They decided to be proactive after the realization that the reactive approach did not provide the outcome they wanted.

The entire state participated, not just a few and just like other proactive training sessions like CPR lives can be saved, and in this case, behavior can be changed.

By using an education approach that was not left up to a coach or trainer, but rather a web-based teaching program that ensures every student-athlete and every coach hears the same message, must pay attention, is tested and then held accountable was the solution that yielded the results each state wanted.

The Data

Among the three stats participating in the STAR mandate, a reduction in documented ejections is evident.

For Alabama, documented ejections in football have risen at an alarming rate, moving from 232 player ejections during the 2003-04 academic year to 353 just two seasons later, an increase of 40 percent.

Following the implementation of the sportsmanship platform, documented player ejections in football went down 21 percent in the 2006 season, decreasing in totals every year since. The 2009 season featured just 141 documented ejections, a decrease of 60 percent over the four years since the STAR Sportsmanship mandate.

For Mississippi, player ejections also have decreased significantly. During the 2007 season, there were a total of 125 documented ejections in football. Following the 2008 and 2009 seasons, both of which occurred following the STAR Sportsmanship mandate, those numbers fell nearly 46 percent over the two years, dropping to 67 player ejections in 2009.

In San Antonio, Texas, the proactive solution implemented by administrators is having a positive impact on student's perceptions and sportsmanship intentions as well.  A recent survey conducted by the San Antonio, TX school system indicated the following:

• 55% of students who completed the STAR Sportsmanship platform indicated they consider sportsmanship more often than before they completed the platform.
• 73% indicated they notice good and bad sportsmanship acts more often after completing the platform.
• 82% indicate that the platform made a positive impact on their decision making process.
• 84% indicated they now have a changed perspective or mindset regarding their role and influence as a high school athlete.
• 87% indicated an overall positive impact after completing the platform.

These numbers illustrate the cognitive and behavioral transformations among those students who completed the STAR Sportsmanship platform in San Antonio. With such definite positive change documented in both perception and behavior, the real question becomes not "if", but "how" this platform can be utilized in changing the culture of sportsmanship at the high school level.

Conclusion and Implication

During a time when teenagers are beginning to critically think independently, the overwhelming positive results this platform can produce creates a win for students, coaches, parents, and schools by placing sportsmanship at the forefront of the minds of student-athletes and coaches well in advance of any negative scenarios that may occur, thereby enhancing the likelihood that they will make correct behavioral choices and  prevent negative fallout that high schools would otherwise face if they did not engage this technology.

Dr. Colby Jubenville, the Director for the Center for Sport Policy and Research at Middle Tennessee State University, isn't surprised to see the positive change.