Sportsmanship in High School Athletics

I miss the camaraderie and excitement of high school athletics. I was on the varsity tennis team, and in addition to the thrill of victory and the more common agony of defeat, our time together was marked with goofing off on long bus rides for away matches and occasional brushes with immortality. One story I'll relate touches on sportsmanship, a situation where my doubles partner and I exhibited very little of it, and the opponents responded in kind.

My doubles partner, Andy and I were creaming this other pair from a school up in Cornwall. They were pretty awful and I believe we "bageled" them (6-0, 6-0). Both of the kids on the other team simply weren't that good, and after a while Andy started making inappropriate, yet hilarious, disparaging comments under his breath so that I could hear him but our opponents could not. Understandably pissed that they were getting destroyed by opponents who were grinning at them, they then resorted to serving the ball directly at our heads, which prompted Andy to say loudly enough so only I could hear, "Holy sh*t Mike, these guys suck! Now they're aiming for us and they're not even coming close." At this point I was cracking up laughing, which certainly angered our opponents even more. I felt bad about laughing, but whenever I tried to stop, Andy would make another snarky remark and I'd be doubled over in laughter again.

So at the end of the match, we shook hands per tennis etiquette and as we met at the net, I managed a sheepish "Sorry guys..." to which one of our opponents nonchalantly said, "No problem, gook."

Andy and I just stood there stunned as they walked away, while they other guy turned around to us and said sneered threateningly, "You guys better watch it..." Ah, the honor and moral lessons of high school sports. The incident pretty much ended there. I'm not sure what I would've said back anyway: "Hey, I'm not Korean. Didn't you mean 'chink'?" or "Uh, you neglected to throw an anti-semitic remark towards my Jewish doubles partner..." or "Thanks for being so gracious, caucasian."

Recently, there were two bits of news related to sportsmanship - one which has been publicized a little more broadly than the other. In Dallas, a girls basketball team from The Covenant School crushed Dallas Academy 100-0, after which the Covenant coach was fired for refusing to apologize for running up the score. The fact that a state-championship caliber school beating up on a school which specialized in kids with learning disabilities was bad enough - the fact that Covenant was still operating a press defense and not simply burn the shot clock during offense was inexcusable. Apparently the Covenant coach is a disciple of college basketball coach Billy Tubbs, who responded to complaints around running up the score by saying, “If they don’t like it, they should get better.”

On the flip side, another story about sportsmanship which I'd like to see get more publicized emerged recently from ESPN, which shared about a team which conspired to purposely miss two foul shots in support of a grieving opponent. Johntell Franklin had recently lost his mother to cancer but had decided at the last moment that he still wanted to play in his Milwaukee-Madison team's game against DeKalb. Because Franklin's name wasn't in the scorebook, DeKalb would be given two technical foul shots.

DeKalb coach Dave Rohlman tried to tell referees that he didn't want his team to get the foul shots, but unable to "waive" them, he did the next best thing. Together with his team, they agreed that they would roll the ball on the floor under the basket twice, essentially missing the foul shots on purpose. This action touched the Milwaukee-Madison coach so much that he wrote a letter to the local newspaper in DeKalb lauding the actions of their team.

That's sportsmanship. Kudos to Dave Rohlman and his boys. It's my sincere hope that my children follow their example and turn away from mercilessly running up the score, chuckling at their overmatched opponents or resorting to racist name-calling. After all, there are far more politically correct ways to insult an opponent.