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Tonya Harding is the poster queen for unsportsmanlike conduct. Recall the plot to injure Nancy Kerrigan before the 1994 Winter Olympics ice-skating competition. Kerrigan, the favorite to win the gold medal, was attacked by a man wielding an iron bar. Harding later confessed to her involvement in the crime. Recently, in France, the father of a 16-year-old tennis protégé bought soft drinks for his son’s rivals and spiked them with a prescription drug to make them drowsy, an effort to help his child win. Then there was the Houston mom who hired a hit man to kill the mother of another girl favored to make the cheerleading squad, believing the grieving girl would lose interest in cheerleading. That scenario would clear a spot for her own daughter. The plot was never carried out. These indefensible acts of cheating define the cliché, “winning at all costs.” But back home in our world of AYSO and Little League, how close do we come to cheating? You know, the little things we do as coaches, parents and players that help “influence” the outcome of a game. Like little white lies Let’s say you’ve figured out the signs the manager of the other baseball team is sending to his catcher and your son is up to bat. You know if the next pitch is a fastball or a curve ball. Do you tell your son? One father had a system down. He’d shout the boy’s name if the manager was calling for a curve ball. If it was a fastball, he’d holler his number. It worked. His son was one of the best hitters on the team. And as a coach, what do you tell your players about “selling the tag” in baseball? In some cases, the player misses the tag altogether but doesn’t let on when the umpire calls the runner out. How about the football coach who told his college players to discreetly grab the opponents’ jerseys from the inside so the official wouldn’t call holding? It put them at a clear advantage by stretching the rules. Are these acts cheating or merely gamesmanship? “We’re at a point where there is no clear line anymore,” says Jeff O’Brien, senior associate director of programs at the Boston-based Center for the Study of Sport in Society. “It’s a combination of deteriorating values in the culture. Sports is a reflection of a larger society…and pushing the envelop of right and wrong is commonplace in our culture. “The levels of people cheating is huge. From what I’ve seen, it’s an epidemic. It goes to the fabric of our culture. There are so many examples (he noted the Enron scandal as well as Martha Stewart’s alleged insider trading) that go all the way down to youth sports.” He cited Danny Almonte and the 2001 Little League World Series that was tainted by Almonte’s false birth certificate. He was actually 14; his father posed him as a 12-year-old. Parents as the guilty party “Everything is about winning; winning the war, winning in politics,” O’Brien says, “but when you see parents cheating for their children at a youth game, it speaks of a larger societal epidemic on cheating.” An indication of society’s reluctant acceptance of this trend was the attention a high school golf coach received for relinquishing the state championship because of a scorekeeping error. When the team arrived home and the coach was going over the scorecards, he noticed they had actually LOST by one stroke. He notified the officials right away so the winning team would be acknowledged. According to O’Brien, “Because he did the right thing, people were holding him up like this wonderful role model. That should be expected behavior, right?” O’Brien claims that’s not the way our society looks at it. “It’s like, ‘Man, you got away with it, what are you doing?’” Jim Thompson, founder of the Positive Coaching Alliance based at Stanford University, argues that cheating vs. gamesmanship is a gray area. “It depends on the culture of the game. It’s complicated.” Of the player who missed the tag, he says, “I wouldn’t expect that player to go the ump and say, ‘Hey, I really didn’t tag him.’ I would admire him, but I wouldn’t expect that.” Thompson refers to the spirit of the rule as the guide players and coaches should follow. “Part of the fun of baseball is having signs and the other team trying to figure out what they are. When the catcher frames a pitch, is that OK or not?” He says sports organizations must decide. “The leaders of the sport need to define boundaries so that if it’s OK to frame a pitch, the kid doesn’t feel he’s doing something unethical or getting away with something. That’s why the spirit of the rule is so important if we’re using sports to teach life lessons.” I won, Pop It is difficult to teach life’s lessons of ethics when young athletes are worried about pleasing Mom and Dad. Notes Christopher Andersonn, author of “Will You Still Love Me if I Don’t Win?”: “In our world, everything is about achievement. You’ve got people putting a value on doing well and that puts enormous pressure on kids.” Andersonn believes children cheat because they’re afraid to lose. “Assure them their value isn’t dependent on how well they do,” Andersonn advises. However, he warns, “A lot of parents will tell their kids, ‘I don’t care how you do,’ but they don’t live their lives that way.” He claims it’s a hard truth for kids to grasp when their own parents are driven and they don’t demonstrate that in their own lives. How can this cheating trend be reversed? According to O’Brien, change requires a cultural shift. “It needs to happen from the top down. People are inherently good and they can be socialized to go one way or the other.” The Center for the Study of Sport in Society utilizes the unique appeal of athletes to promote positive social change. “The key is, you have to be a leader,” he says. “We bring this message to kids…using terms like guts and courage. It takes courage to stand up and go against the tide.” O’Brien suggests we need to get specific on the subject. “They need permission, social permission, that it’s a good thing NOT to cheat.” Thompson’s Positive Coaching Alliance is working to reinstate ethics in youth sports. “One solution is to move away from the professional entertainment model of sports and make youth sports an educational experience again for kids,” he suggests. Thompson, who works with 300 organizations across the country and just signed an agreement with AYSO soccer, says, “We need to redefine what it means to be a winner away from the scoreboard.” His philosophy is to think of winning in terms of mastery. “When coaches focus on winning at the expense of other goals (such as mastery), kids tend to cheat more. When they focus on mastery and performing your best, they tend to cheat less. “If you focus on winning, anxiety goes up because you don’t have control over the other team. If a coach encourages them to focus on mastery, anxiety goes down and self-confidence goes up.” O’Brien stresses, “We need to teach kids the sport, but also life skills: teaching leadership, going against the grain, doing something right, not because it’s popular. “The whole ideal that we all want to hold on to is that good wins in the end.” -Kimberly A. Porrazzo is a senior writer. |
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