Kids and Sportsmanship

We should be able to win and http://www.eaglesshopnflofficial.com/ lose as good sports. That should be a key that we teach our kids as both coaches and as parents. There are far too many examples of bad sportsmanship.
After every youth game, kids on both teams shake hands. I can’t believe how many times I’ve heard kids saying “bad game”. Unbelievably, I hear this more often from kids who lost the game. There is no excuse for a coach allowing his players to say anything derogatory to the other team after a game as the losing team or the winning team. Is this the kid who ten years from now will throw a full beer at an NBA player? Maybe not, but it’s certainly not good sportsmanship and that needs to be one of our major objectives Eagles Authentic Alex Henery Jersey in youth sports: to teach kids how to be good sports in both victory and defeat.
After getting pretty soundly beaten during the 2004 NLDS, the Los Angeles Dodgers went onto the field and shook hands with the St. Louis Cardinals congratulating them on their victory. Surely, the Dodgers were not happy to lose, but they displayed the kind of sportsmanship that all of us should strive for. Eric Gagne, the Dodgers Cy Young award winning closer, was born in Canada and is a huge hockey fan. He was inspired to make this happen by the NHL tradition of having Stanley Cup participants shake hand after each series. There was even the Little Buccaneers Ronde Barber Elite Jersey League world series game where a pitcher ran to home plate so that he would be waiting to shake hands with the hitter who just hit a tater off of him.
In contrast, NCAA rivals the Clemson Tigers and the South Carolina Gamecocks got into a 10 minute free-for-all. The game was lopsided in the 4th quarter when the fight started, exhibiting poor sportsmanship on both sides. Rather than apologizing, Clemson running back Yusef Kelly was proud of the fact that they kept the fight on the field and didn’t involve the fans. While that’s certainly better than the Pistons/Pacers Brawl, because it’s all about the kids, we have to make more of an effort to teach coaches, parents, officials and fans more about sportsmanship.
Sports is ultimately about winning and losing, but changing our views on these subjects and how to deal with the life lessons that can be learned through sports is crucial. Kids can learn through sports and the family bonds created by watching and playing sports together is unparalleled. That is what makes the "T.O." Monday Night Football pre-game show so difficult http://www.eaglesshopnflofficial.com/EAGLES-ARRELIOUS-BENN-JERSEY to accept. As parents, we can make a decision to restrict our kids from watching Desperate Housewives if we want to, but why should we even think about not watching football with our family? Every sporting event on TV now has commercials for ED, alcohol and sexual content that we would generally not allow our kids to watch. With sports playing such an important role in society, networks need to be more careful what they broadcast to our kids just like parents and coaches need to do a better job with what we teach.
The majority of fans, parents and coaches are good people who play and cheer with a positive attitude. Yet, we all get emotional with sports, especially when we watch our kids. It’s just important to remember that we are being watched. The way we coach, play and root for our kids in youth sports has a dramatic impact. The results of these our actions in youth sports can be seen throughout society, but were clearly evident during the disturbing recent events. We can all do better.