Mar03

Sportsmanship sometimes gets lost in the storm of sports competition today. Our kids and coaches are focused on winning, because we’ve told them it isn’t the most important thing, it’s the only thing.

Okay, let’s let them do their thing, and take charge of sportsmanship from the sideline. In youth sports, parents are right there, practically on the field, and have the chance to make a really great impact on sportsmanship, or a really bad one.

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Here are my top three tips for you, as a parent and spectator, to lead by example and show your kids what sportsmanship is all about.

  1. Cheer for the other team. I don’t mean root for the other team, I mean just complement players on the other team when they do something spectacular, a great save, a super run, an amazing double play.
  2. Never criticize your child’s teammates. Everyone misses an easy shot or strikes out or goes off-sides at a critical time. Let it go. If it were your kid, you wouldn’t want other parents calling her or him out for a subpar performance.
  3. When the ref makes a call you don’t like, even an obviously horrible call, keep quiet. You can use that bad call as a teaching moment for your child after the game. First of all, that ref probably doesn’t want to make a bad call, it happens sometimes. Maybe the ref was biased, but life’s not fair either. Bad calls get made in everyday life all the time and sometimes they cost us dearly. Get over it and move on, it’s part of sports and part of life. [NOTE: Check out chapters 11 through 13 in Lost Boy by Tim Green, in which the character of Doyle experiences some “bad calls” in his daily life, but perseveres.]

These things aren’t easy, but nothing worth having usually is. Good luck and have fun!

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Tim Green, a former NFL football player, is the New York Times bestselling author of the Football Genius series, the Baseball Great series, Best of the Best, New Kid, and First Team, among other great sport titles for middle-grade readers.

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