By Greg Scholand
Greg Scholand in an Assistant Editor at Athletic Management. He can be reached at: gs@MomentumMedia.com.
Athletic Management, 18.3, April/May 2006, http://www.momentummedia.com/articles/am/am1803/gettingtough.htm
Kal Bay, a senior at Marcos de Niza High School in Tempe, Ariz., has made headlines throughout his high school basketball career, mostly for exceptional play. The 6-foot-2 point guard was on Arizona’s All State ballot his freshman year, collected regional player of the year awards as an underclassman, and was recruited by several NCAA Division I basketball programs before committing to the University of Colorado. But he was in the news for a different reason in December, as the first athlete in his state to face the consequences of a new in-game conduct rule.
Passed by the Arizona Interscholastic Association (AIA) in the spring of 2005, the rule says that any time a student-athlete enters the spectator area to engage in a verbal or physical confrontation, he or she is automatically suspended for the remainder of the season and barred from all sanctioned interscholastic competition. In addition, his or her school can be prohibited from postseason play in all sports, pending a review by the AIA.
In Bay’s case, the Arizona Republic reported that during a Dec. 6 game, he entered the stands shortly after fouling out when he saw his mother and girlfriend being harassed by opposing fans. No punches were thrown, but Bay verbally confronted the fans before being restrained and returning to the playing area.
“In a facility full of people, game security can only do so much, so we’re drawing the line with athletes and saying they cannot act in any way that could create a violent, ugly, out-of-control situation,” says Chuck Schmidt, Assistant Executive Director of the AIA. “Sports are an opportunity to teach responsibility and respect for other people, and we want athletes to understand that what they do affects themselves and their team, so they need to make smart decisions.”
Many others share Schmidt’s sentiments. After years of promoting good sportsmanship, administrators at every level are realizing that positive reinforcement is not enough. Athletes are still exhibiting negative behavior, and fans are still getting out of control.
In response, some administrators have turned to harsher penalties and zero tolerance. They are making conduct rules tougher and throwing fans out of their arenas more quickly. In this article, we check in with some of these newer, sterner initiatives to see how they’re working.
CROWD OUT
When Ron Zanazzo of Northeast Regional Vocational High School, in Wakefield, Mass., scored the game-tying goal in a 2005 championship matchup against longtime Massachusetts hockey rival Shawsheen Valley Technical High School, the response from the home bench was huge. Players banged their sticks against the boards in applause and shouted in celebration. But from the stands, there was no celebration at all. At a game that would normally be packed to the rafters, there were no fans.
A month earlier, when the same two teams met at Shawsheen Tech, a post-game fight broke out involving players and spectators. One fan was sent to the emergency room for stitches after being hit on the head with a hockey stick. “I had been at two basketball games that afternoon, and soon after I got home that night my phone started ringing,” recalls Northeast Athletic Director Dave Keough. “I spent the next two days talking with our league personnel, Shawsheen’s athletic director, the site director, the police, our coaching staff, the commissioner of officials, and the officials from the game. I knew right away we would need to have a strong response.”
On Monday, Keough approached his superintendent with a proposal. He suggested that when the teams met again on Northeast’s ice, only people necessary for the game—players, coaches, athletic trainers, game officials, and the media—should be allowed inside. “She asked if I was sure I wanted to do this, and I said, ‘Yeah, let’s take a stand.’” Keough says. “She replied, ‘Alright. I’ll back you 100 percent.’”
Parents and others were a harder sell—especially after Northeast went on an 11-game winning streak following the incident, which meant the game against Shawsheen Tech would decide the league championship. “I received a couple of mild threats—‘I’m gonna get you,’ and ‘Who are you to tell me this?’—crazy stuff like that,” Keough says. “At the last minute, I even had a politician call and say that one of his relatives was playing and the parents had never missed a game, so he would appreciate it if we changed our decision. I told him, ‘I’m sorry. This is the way it’s going to be.’”
Northeast officials apprised the state association of the plan, and letters were sent home with each player explaining why no one would be allowed in to watch the game. Nonetheless, parents and other hockey fans were frustrated by the decision, and both local and national media gave them a platform to vent. Less conspicuous were the many people who called or e-mailed to say they admired the school for putting its foot down on violent behavior. CNN even conducted an Internet poll, in which over 80 percent of respondents said they agreed with the move.
A year later, Keough remains convinced that Northeast made the right decision. “Of course, we’ll never know exactly how much of an impact it had on people, but I can say without a doubt that our fans have been great this year,” he says. “People seem to better understand what we expect of them and we haven’t had any problems. We took a drastic step because I thought the situation needed a drastic step. And it worked.”
The “behave or stay away” doctrine was also used with success at Heritage High School in Newport News, Va., in February of this year. But this time, there was no pre-event discussion or weekend to think up a plan. During the fourth quarter of a basketball game against archrival Warwick High School, when fans began streaming onto the court to join in a shoving match between players, Heritage Principal Tim Sweeney simply got on the gym’s PA system and ordered all spectators—around 1,200 people—out of the building.
“At first I was telling them to return to their seats, but when it was obvious they weren’t listening, I told everyone the game was over and they needed to clear out,” Sweeney says. “I told the coaches to take their teams to the locker rooms, and once the players and officials were gone, it took about 20 minutes for everybody to leave.”
With the gym clear, athletes and officials were brought back out to play the final three minutes—though not before Sweeney read both teams the riot act at center court. “I said this type of conduct would not be tolerated by either school, and that my expectation was for them to play hard but to play with sportsmanship,” he says. “At that point, looking around the empty gym, they really seemed to get the message.
“Both teams put their hands together in the middle of the court, chanted ‘1-2-3-TEAM,’ and then shook hands with one another,” Sweeney continues. “I could see on their faces they were embarrassed about the way they’d acted. The referees then ejected the players who had started the shoving, and we finished the game.”
Like Keough, Sweeney received much positive feedback about the incident, taking calls from parents, coaches, and even the head of the Virginia High School League to congratulate him for making the right call. But the real reward, he says, came the following week when Heritage hosted the district tournament. “It was exactly how you envision sports should be,” Sweeney says. “Great competition on the floor, and great fan involvement in a positive manner. The message we sent the previous week had been received loud and clear.”
FOUL TRACKERS
Among college conferences, the Empire 8, comprising Division III schools in Upstate New York, may be the Shangri-la of sportsmanship. Under the slogan “Competing with Honor & Integrity,” the conference actively promotes sportsmanship with annual awards for sportsmen and sportswomen of the year, and a program that gives student-athletes the chance to write and read PA announcements about good conduct before games. But the most unique program the Empire 8 has created is a system of tracking conduct fouls.
Begun four years ago, it gives athletic directors a tangible way to measure progress in promoting good conduct. “Sportsmanship has always been such an important value of the Empire 8, I thought it would be helpful for our conference and our individual schools to really find out how the athletes are doing in this area,” says Chuck Mitrano, Commissioner of the Empire 8 and a founder of the NCAA Division III Sportsmanship and Ethical Conduct Committee. “I started looking in the rulebooks of various sports to find out which infractions are considered ‘unsporting’ or ‘unethical,’ and decided this could be a good way for us to see where we are.”
At first, each athletic director received a report at year’s end tallying his or her school’s conduct fouls in every sport. But Mitrano decided the information would be more valuable if it were updated throughout the season, so he made the system work in “real time.”
“We saw a tremendous reduction in conduct fouls after we started doing the tracking in real time,” Mitrano says. “It’s very helpful to know your numbers from year to year, to establish a baseline and then see if you’re headed in the right direction. But in real time, you can see which teams need to be engaged in a discussion about sportsmanship immediately.”
Statistics for other schools in the conference are provided anonymously, so each program learns how it stacks up against its peers. And in sports that allow it, greater detail is provided. “In soccer, if a guy gets a yellow card for dissent, or for elbowing, or for profanity, that shows up on the report, and we organize the information to show how many infractions occurred in each category,” Mitrano explains. “An athletic director can look at the information with his coach and see exactly what they need to focus on when talking with the athletes. It really provides a context for a discussion about sportsmanship and gives our schools a way to engage athletes and educate them.”
How exactly do the Empire 8 schools use the information? At Utica College, Athletic Director Jim Spartano meets with a coach every time an athlete commits a conduct foul. “We created a special conduct form, which the coach fills out each time there’s a foul to report what happened, and they’ll put it in my mailbox. I’ll read it, and then go and talk to them,” he says. “I love that it gives me a way to follow what’s happening in all our programs. It allows the coach to explain what’s going on with his or her athletes, and it’s an opportunity for both of us to think about the importance of good sportsmanship. Our coaches have been great about it, and the number of fouls has gone down.”
Spartano also uses the system to address problems before they escalate. “If I find I’m meeting with one coach a lot about yellow cards or technical fouls, I know I need to do more,” he says. “We talk about sportsmanship and conduct a lot at our staff meetings, and this is another instrument to get everyone in the department communicating.”
With so much positive feedback on the program, Mitrano recently used an NCAA grant to expand the foul-tracking system throughout Division III on a voluntary basis. More than 60 percent of eligible schools chose to participate, and he’s now looking to take the program to Divisions I and II.
“A lot of people generalize about the problems in sportsmanship at the college level today,” he says. “But it’s not fair to just make a broad judgment. You need to have something to back it up, and this tracking system gives administrators a way to see what they’re doing right and where they need to focus more energy.”
SEASON OVER
Arizona’s new rule prohibiting high school athletes from going into the stands has been criticized by some for being too harsh. But negative events were simply piling up. In one incident last year, a fan was sent to the hospital after being punched in the face by a basketball player during a game. And two years ago, Joe Kay, a senior at Salpointe Catholic High School in Tucson with a scholarship to Stanford University, was partially paralyzed after suffering a stroke when fans rushed the court to celebrate his game-ending dunk. Following the example of a similar rule passed by the Ohio High School Athletic Association, the AIA decided the time was right to take a stand.
“Our rule is patterned after Ohio’s, and both were made for the same reason,” the AIA’s Schmidt says. “Anytime you’re dealing with a high school sports setting, things can escalate very quickly.
“We received a few comments from individuals who felt the punishment was too strict, but a number of schools called us to say they appreciated the fact that the rule was there to protect everyone at our games,” he continues. “I’d say 95 percent of those who contacted us were supportive.”
Schmidt also points out that the Bay incident was the first—and to date, the only—time the rule has been applied. Thus, he feels athletes are getting the message. A season-ending suspension and consequences that touch the entire athletic department may seem like a tough lesson for one bad choice, but, Schmidt asks, “If we don’t start to teach kids accountability in high school, when will they learn it?”
At Westview High School, Marcos de Niza’s opponent and host for the game that resulted in Bay’s suspension, Athletic Director Mike Warren says the incident also served as a reminder of the importance of game management. “There should never be a situation where an athlete feels they need to go up into the stands, for any reason,” he says. “At that game, our system was working. We had an assistant principal and another coach already down there in the middle of the situation, and our event security was there, too. The people involved were in the process of being ejected. So if [Bay] hadn’t crossed that line, there wouldn’t have been a problem.”
Warren referred the fans’ disorderly conduct to local police, and barred them from attending future events at Westview. He says these proactive steps reinforced the message that administrators—not athletes—should be concerned with what happens in the stands. The school also ramped up its pre-game and in-game PA announcements to remind fans that poor conduct will not be tolerated.
Above all, though, Warren believes the incident was a wake-up call for high school athletes in Arizona: Take responsibility for your behavior, or you lose the privilege of participating. “I’m pretty sure the next kid will think twice before he goes up into the stands,” Warren says. “Now, they’ve seen what can happen.”
“I’m glad we have an opportunity to use athletics to help kids understand the results their actions can have,” agrees Schmidt. “When they get to the NFL or the NBA, or into the working world, we want to hear good things about the people they’ve become because of what we taught them, not bad things because of what we overlooked.”
FROM THE TOP DOWN
Steve Cobb doesn’t believe in elaborate collections of hard-and-fast, spelled out rules. “You’ll forget to put ‘Don’t steal an airplane’ on your list of rules, and somebody will steal an airplane and say, ‘Hey, it’s not against the rules,’” says the Athletic Director at the University of Alaska.
Instead, he believes in insisting on good moral judgment and passing out penalties when athletes don’t measure up. For Cobb, teaching sportsmanship is not just another part of the job—it’s the backbone of his athletic department.
The motto Alaska uses to sum up its approach was borrowed from the legendary Bear Bryant: Show class, have pride, and display character. If you do, winning takes care of itself. “That’s kind of our mission statement,” Cobb says. “You can’t be an athlete here and not see it about three times a day, and you can’t be a student here and not see it at least once. In everything, that’s our acid test for how we conduct ourselves.”
Cobb has very specific reasons for making sportsmanship a priority. First, he believes that developing emotional self-control, particularly in pressure situations when adrenaline is running high, is a trait that will serve athletes well in college and beyond. Second, he sees all his athletes as 24/7 ambassadors for the university who need to conduct themselves in a way that brings honor to their institution. And third, he knows that first-class behavior and great sportsmanship are proven characteristics of champions.
To make his message clear, Cobb meets in person with teams on several occasions every year to discuss sportsmanship and expectations. And when an incident arises involving an athlete within the program or at another school in the league, he uses it as a teachable moment. He also brings the subject up regularly during meetings with coaches. The result is an atmosphere where the athletes value sportsmanship and reinforce it in each other.
“We don’t have a magic bullet that makes our athletes display good sportsmanship, and we’re definitely not perfect, but it’s something we’re always talking about and that creates a certain awareness,” Cobb says. “We also encourage a little positive peer pressure—when the students know what’s expected, they’ll share it among themselves.”
When problems do arise, Cobb looks at each case individually. “Generally, the first time there’s a conduct problem involving an athlete, I let the coach handle it,” he says. “The second time, they’re going to meet with me and the coach, and I’ll discuss possible ramifications. And it’s amazing, because we often find it’s the first time in an athlete’s entire career somebody’s told them that participating is contingent on proper behavior. If you’ve been playing sports most of your life, to hear that for the first time is a real wake-up call. If there’s a third time, the punishment will be significant, and it will involve missed playing time. If that doesn’t solve the problem, that student-athlete will probably no longer be in our program.”
Cobb says he’s not afraid to hand out sterner sentences for poor conduct than those issued by his league office, and he has even suspended players for incidents where the league felt no suspension was necessary. “We don’t apologize for the fact that we expect all our student-athletes to be better ambassadors than our opponents,” he says. “That’s not any kind of arrogance on our part. We simply believe that aspiring to first-class conduct is a noble goal.”
What is the outcome of such a hands-on, department-wide approach to good sportsmanship? Cobb can point to many examples of times he’s felt proud of his athletes because of their actions, but one instance in particular always makes him smile. “Our ski team was at a meet a few years back, and one of our opponents had all of their equipment stolen,” he recalls. “Without any hesitation, our athletes scrambled and loaned and traded, and to make a long story short, the opposing team was able to compete with our equipment. Our team didn’t hesitate to help the other team out and make sure they had a chance to compete. I thought that act was really in the best spirit of intercollegiate athletics and reflected the higher ideals of competition.”
OFFICE VISITS
Like most state association commissioners, Dennis Ackerman of the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) San Diego Section has dealt with his share of sportsmanship issues, and his section has implemented rules similar to those that exist elsewhere. But last winter, he reviewed a grainy videotape from a high school basketball game that prompted him to do more.
A brawl had erupted between fans from opposing teams, eventually spilling onto the court and resulting in a double-forfeit. “Order was just being restored, and the camera happened to catch this one kid who jumped out of the stands across from where the fight was. He didn’t get into it, but he ran over to where it was happening and was just jumping around, real excited,” Ackerman recalls. “Then, as he turned and ran back to the stands, you could read his lips as he pumped his fists in the air: ‘This is great!’
“As soon as I saw that, I thought to myself, that is what’s wrong here,” Ackerman continues. “This kid is seeing this kind of behavior and thinking how great it is. We needed to change the way our young people look at this kind of occurrence.”
That basketball game proved to be the tipping point in a year that included many unsportsmanlike conduct incidents in football, water polo, and soccer, among other sports. An existing CIF rule imposed a mandatory one-game suspension for any athlete or coach ejected from a game, but it was clearly not an effective deterrent. So, along with other CIF administrators, Ackerman instituted a system of mandatory in-person conferences between himself and anyone—athlete, coach, or fan—who gets thrown out of a game. From the date of the incident until the meeting takes place, the athlete or coach remains suspended from all contests.
“If it’s a parent who was a spectator at the game, then the parent comes into my office. If it’s a kid, then we want the kid here with the coach, an administrator to represent the school, and one of the parents. And if it’s a coach, that coach comes in,” Ackerman says. “I usually set aside one or two afternoons a week, and I’ll have appointments every 15 minutes.”
Although this simple rule may not seem particularly harsh, it has proven very effective. Part of the impact of the face-to-face meetings is simply having to sit across from the commissioner’s desk and talk about what you did.
“We’ll hear a coach say something like, ‘Oh God, I’ve got to go up to CIF,’” Ackerman says. “Sometimes the school administrator will turn to the kid and say, ‘You know what? I don’t like being here—this had better never happen again.’
“I keep what I say pretty simple, because mostly the point is just to get them to step back and think about what they did,” he continues. “Most people are truly apologetic, and they tell me they’re embarrassed they had to come here. It really sends the message that if someone has a problem controlling their behavior, they need to take care of it.”
After their conference, the athlete, coach, or parent isn’t off the hook quite yet. They’re also required to attend a seminar-style meeting that focuses on why good conduct is important to the CIF. Ackerman and Assistant Commissioner Bill McLaughlin each give short presentations, a video on sportsmanship from the NFHS is shown, and every attendee is required to write out what sportsmanship means to them, handing in the responses as they leave. Anyone who fails to show up has their suspension reinstated, and as a result, attendance at the events is near perfect.
Ackerman says the whole process is a major time commitment for him and other CIF personnel, but the effort has paid off. “As soon as we started doing this last winter, it just knocked everything down,” he says. “Then this fall, in our two major sports for misconduct—football and boys’ water polo—ejections were down, and the violence was down in general. And we’ve gotten some great feedback from coaches and players saying it’s improved the games for them.”
Ackerman hopes to scale the program back if the positive trend continues. But for now, the CIF San Diego Section is proud to be leading the way in combating poor sportsmanship. “We’re standing up and sending a message that certain types of behavior aren’t okay, and it’s really working,” Ackerman says. “It’s pretty strict, but it gets the point across.”
Sidebar: 72 HOURS
At the University of Alaska, Athletic Director Steve Cobb doesn’t have many written rules about penalties for poor athlete conduct, preferring to deal with incidents on a case-by-case basis. But there’s one rule he always observes: When a situation may require disciplinary action, he waits 72 hours before doing anything.
“Taking those 72 hours is absolutely critical,” Cobb says. “First of all, we don’t want to overreact. Secondly, we don’t want to be unfair to the student-athletes. And third, we want to make sure that our actions match our department philosophies and beliefs.
“I’ve learned that when you have an issue involving a college athletic contest, it takes 72 hours before you can really get the straight story of everything that happened,” he continues. “It’s not that anybody’s trying to be deceptive, but between the emotion, the adrenaline, and the different perspectives people have, everything needs to settle down before you can analyze a situation properly.”