Sportsmanship starts with the handshake
Sports and sportsmanship Experts: Post-game handshakes build character
DAVID UBBEN
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Published: June 28, 2009
No way he was shaking the hand of the kid who had just ruined his season. Forget it.
His coach, Don Maisch, couldn’t remember the last time he felt worse for one of his players. The goalie couldn’t get that image out of his head. One more chance and it would have gone differently. The shot came from just past the halfway line bisecting the 60-yard field. It whipped its way toward the goal on a line, surprising considering it came from a leg that was only 8 years old, like he was. Three defenders didn’t stop it, and neither could the goalie’s hands. Before they could return the ball to midfield for a kickoff, the whistle blew.
* * *
Any athlete or coach who joins
YMCA youth sport programs doesn’t get far before learning where the league’s emphasis lies. The symbols on the scoreboard could be replaced with Egyptian hieroglyphs and few would notice. Emphasizing character in every situation takes precedence over learning the fundamentals of the game.
"It’s just part of what the YMCA does,” said Maisch, who works closely with the organization and also coaches teams in a variety of sports.
Dwayne Gipson coaches basketball at the YMCA, and gives his players a handout of what is expected of their character before they touch a ball on the first day of practice. On that list is a mandate that players must shake hands with their opponents when a game concludes.
Although the action is required, many coaches who oversee teams of young athletes say the gesture isn’t involuntary.
"If there’s a dialogue around those actions, they have meaning,” said Edmond YMCA executive director
Mike Roark.
Roark says provoking those conversations is up to coaches, and he stresses that to all who volunteer.
"If there’s no dialogue, then maybe you do have kids just going through the motions. You have to talk to kids about why we’re doing what we’re doing.”
But others worry that the importance of and message behind the simple act becomes garbled when stars like the NBA’s
LeBron James and the NHL’s
Sidney Crosby make headlines with high-profile snubs of the postgame display.
"When professional athletes turn their backs on these important lessons to be learned from sports, then we encourage young people to be misfits in the next generation,” said
Fred Engh, founder, president and CEO of the
National Alliance for Youth Sports, a group that advocates the importance of sports in child development.
Not everyone believes that’s the case.
* * *
It’s easy to discount the YMCA league game’s meaning, but for the goalie, the difference between a Saturday afternoon in the park and a World Cup final is slight. An 8-year-old goalkeeper doesn’t have an archive of game-winning saves to remember or go home and watch to rescue his confidence. He slunk to the bench and hoped to be left alone. The only thing he wanted to see was the patch of grass between his two cleats, an image becoming more distorted by the second from the tears welling at the bottom of his eyelids. He wasn’t even ready to walk to the car for a ride home. And he was supposed to go make nice with those jerks on the other sideline? Where was the fast forward button to the
Rice Krispies treat and juice box finale?
* * *
Engh and his organization view the superstars’ slights as a dangerous precedent. But others perceive that outlook as an overreaction.
"I think most of the kids are thinking more about these athletes’ skills, not so much them as a person,” said
Rob Hersom, the sports director at the Northside YMCA in
Oklahoma City. "They’re more concerned about what they do on the basketball court than what they do off of it.”
Hersom knows kids are aware of what most players do off the field if it makes news, but he says the YMCA makes a point of ensuring that those who participate have more than just professional athletes influence their actions on the court.
Some coaches in the league require their players to shake the hands of referees before and after games, a practice other coaches said they’d like to see popularized. After YMCA games, parents form a tunnel for athletes from both teams to run through together.
"Football players will beat up on each other for 60 minutes and then come together to hold a prayer,” Maisch said. "If they can do that, you should be able to shake a guy’s hand.”
The main theme is respect. Respect for the game, the opponent and the people who help make youth sports a reality. No professional athlete can change the significance of an otherwise simple gesture.
"It’s a huge part of the game,” said
Cody Strunk, who coaches T-ball. "If you took that away, it’d be more obvious than removing any other rule in the game. Everyone would notice, and you’d have a generation of kids who don’t understand character. I wouldn’t want to be a part of that.”
* * *
Maisch followed his team to the bench, where the players consoled their goalie.
"Hey, I should have had that ball. It should have never even gotten to you,” a teammate said.
Nothing helped. His coach offered even more words of encouragement. Still, the message appeared to fail at reaching its destination, even between sniffles. But the goalie knew his day wasn’t done. After less than a minute of coaxing, he stood up. Wiping the tears from his eyes with his oversized blue goalie glove, he strode back to midfield, assuming his place in line with his teammates.
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