Bringing sportsmanship back to your youth sports leagues: learn how the Salt Lake County park and recreation department changed its youth sports by changing the game.

When the carnage ended, the scoreboard revealed that the girls 5th-6th grade basketball team that had signed up for the league as an intact unit had defeated their opponent by more than 50 points. Across the floor was a thoroughly embarrassed and discouraged group of girls from tire losing team, each of whom had signed up for the league as an individual. One month earlier, those girls had appeared at the park and recreation office, registration forms in hand, as excited novices eager to learn a new activity that seemed to promise fun, fitness and new friendships. Consistently, the mission statement displayed proudly by the registration window of the park and recreation office proclaimed that the department "develops pride," among other outcomes.

No pride, however, was developed that day. The novices' playful enthusiasm and fascination with basic skills of dribbling, defense and shooting had been fully consumed by the superiority of their opponents, who stole the ball at will, ran patterned offenses, and reveled in the rout of their less-experienced opponents. To add lasting insult to injury, when the teams lined up for the ceremonial post-game handshake, the coach of the winning team, a parent of one of the more experienced and talented girls, refused to participate. "I'm not shaking their hands," he exclaimed, "those girls suck." An hour later, a parent of a girl on the losing team was still trying to console her daughter who continued to lie on her bed sobbing. The score discrepancy had quickly been cleared by the league supervisor in preparation for the following game, but the memories of losing and effects of those memories on subsequent participation in sport and physical activity would certainly be much more long-lasting.

A very concerned park and recreation manager at the annual meeting of the Utah Recreation and Parks Association last year, described this incident that did take place. The situation exemplifies a pervasive problem of sportsmanship in youth sports. Too many youth sport environments are characterized by sportsmanship violations that range from being subtle and insidious to being tragic media sensations involving serious physical injury and legal action. Reason for optimism, however, clearly exists. Increasing numbers of progressive park and recreation professionals are stepping forward to address this tragic trend by implementing creative and innovative policies that are designed to promote good sportsmanship and create positive outcomes such as enjoyment of health-promoting physical activity and personal pride in accomplishments. Indeed, sessions on sportsmanship are in high-demand at professional meetings and articles are appearing in professional publications (such as Dennis Docheff and James Conn's article, "It's no longer a spectator sport" in the March 2004 issue of Parks and Recreation) and in popular media.

A new program entitled the "Play Hard, Play Fair, Play Fun Program," was implemented through a youth sport program that was offered through a partnership between the Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism at the University of Utah and the Salt Lake County Parks and Recreation Department, at their Copperview Community Center. This new initiative worked well in Salt Lake County, and could work for your organization as well.

A fleeting glimpse at an enormous problem

This sportsmanship problem is clearly pervasive. More and more youth are dropping out of organized sports programs--never to return. In his book "Why Johnny Hates Sports," National Alliance for Youth Sports President Fred Engh reports that "70 percent of the approximately 20 million children who participate in organized out-of-school athletic programs will quit by the age of 13 because of unpleasant sports experiences." Consistently a study conducted at Michigan State University identified the top 10 reasons that boys quit youth sports. Eight of the top 10 reasons were directly related to sportsmanship and having fun:

* I was no longer interested.

* It was no longer fun.

* The sport took too much time.

* The coach played favorites.

* The coach was a poor teacher.

* I was tired of playing.

* There was too much emphasis on winning.

* There was too much pressure.

Another study by the Minnesota Amateur Sports Commission revealed that almost one in two youth sports participants had been yelled at, called names, or insulted. Almost one in five reported having been hit, kicked, or slapped and approximately one in 10 reported being pressured to intentionally harm an opponent.

Such incidents clearly contribute to the exodus of youth from sport programs and prevent youth from achieving the tremendous physical and psychological benefits that are possible from healthy participation in sport and physical activity. The importance of the physical fitness outcome is underscored by the obesity epidemic that characterizes today's United States population of both adults and youth. Among youth alone, National Institutes of Health data show that obesity is up 40 percent over the last 40 years. Solving the sportsmanship problem must become a priority if parks and recreation is to take its rightful place among public service professions that truly promote health and quality of life.

The Play Hard, Play Fair, Play Fun Program

To address this need, we developed the "Play Hard, Play Fair, Play Fun" (PHPFPF) program. That program was rooted in pro-social behavior theory, research on absorbing and engaging experiences, the Benefits Based Programming Model, and the New Games "Play Hard, Play Fair, Nobody Hurt" philosophy. Most prominent among these foundations was pro-social behavior theory. Pro-social behavior theory is a social-psychological theory that seeks to explain why people engage in altruistic behaviors that benefit others and support the common good. In designing the program, the development team noted that principles and techniques from pro-social behavior theory have been successfully applied by natural resource recreation managers in addressing problems of vandalism and depreciative behaviors.

Petitions, for example, have been shown to reduce litter. From a pro-social behavior theory perspective, the petitions activate social responsibility norms and establish a situation in which the act of littering would be inconsistent with an expressed value of not littering. Similarly, "Junior Ranger" programs, which enlist children as honorary rangers, lead to on-site behaviors that protect resources and foster positive relations between young guests and rangers, interpreters and park managers.

PHPFPF development thus began with a question: "can we engineer a similar level of success by applying pro-social behavior theory principles to the youth sportsmanship problem?"

Pro-social behavior theory offered three general principles that might be used to animate youth sports experiences. In PHPFPF, we named these three principles as follows:

* Personalization 

* Community; commitment to common cause

* Punishments and Rewards

Personalization refers to procedures that help participants to regard other players as individuals rather than as relatively nameless teammates. In our daily lives, we are much less likely to express anger or aggression toward people if we know their name and a hit about them (Where do they go to school? What do they like in addition to this sport?).

Similarly; establishment of a sense of common, shared purpose call elicit pro-social behavior. When children are enlisted as "Junior Rangers," for example, they join the community of park and recreation professionals who are charged with the responsibility of protecting the park. For developers of the PHPFPF, the challenge became, "how can we create a common, shared purpose among all participants (parents, players, coaches, staff) of promoting fun and sportsmanship?"

Recognizing the time-tested power of punishments and rewards, and the place of those principles in pro-social behavior theory, we considered ways of implementing new forms of punishments and rewards for good and bad sportsmanship. In the youth basketball context, traditional forms of punishments are limited to verbal warnings, technical fouls, temporary removal from the game, and ejections. With PHPFPF, we significantly expanded the range of punishments and included attention to rewards for good sportsmanship behavior.

In addition to pro-social behavior theory techniques, we also incorporated ideas from behavioral science theory on engaging experiences into the program. In the case of PHPFPF, the challenge was to identify mechanisms that promote opportunities for participants' challenges to be commensurate with their skills. In many cases, challenge-skill imbalance becomes problematic for both the "stacked" team and for the team of novices. In the development of PHPFPF, the question thus became, "how can we promote experiences in which participants' challenges lend to be well matched to their skill levels?"

We also followed the Benefits-Based Programming (BBP) Model (as described by Larry Allen, Bonnie Stevens, Karen Paisley, and Rick Harwell). BBP involves targeting specific, measurable program outcomes, enhancing participants' experiences in ways that would achieve those outcomes, and then actively measuring the extent to which targeted benefits were indeed accomplished. Thus, just as physicians diagnose illnesses and choose medications to address problems related to illness and injury, BBP encourages park and recreation professionals to think clearly and act in very reasoned ways about specific benefits and mechanisms for creating those benefits. In contrast, in the story at the beginning of fills article, a clear disconnect is evident between the program mission (i.e., promoting pride), the way the program was "animated" (i.e., using policies that resulted in "stacked" teams of experienced players matched against teams of novices) and the program outputs (humiliation and loss of interest).

Finally the PHPFPF development team recognized that techniques for creating a better environment could occur before, during and after the games, as well as being part of the general experience of participation in the program (see Table 1 on page 51).

PHPFPF in Action

So what did the program actually look like? PHPFPF involved pre-season orientations of coaches, parents, and referees; improvements to the overall atmosphere of the games; modifications of game procedures; and the addition of post-game rituals. Before the season even started, parents were informed via the registration forms, that this year's program would be different--that it would be recreational in nature and would specifically target the development of sportsmanship through a variety of techniques.

Then, at the organizational meeting, parents and coaches were informed about these techniques in detail. Perhaps the most crucial policy change required that any intact team "play up" an age group. Intact teams are likely to have played or practiced together, thus increasing their ability level. By playing a team of novices from the next age group, the teams should be more balanced--resulting in a more fair (and fun) competition.

The procedures for the games themselves were also modified to help enhance personalization. The referees introduced themselves to the players, and the players introduced themselves to each other--so the people on the court were no longer "strangers." After these introductions, the referees reminded the players about being good sports. Throughout the game, referees were encouraged to use the technical foul system liberally in address sportsmanship violations from players, coaches, or spectators and signaled with a "Blue Flag" system, similar to the card system in soccer. Waving the blue flag called attention to the poor conduct for all in the gym to see--relying on embarrassment and social pressure as a punishment to reduce the occurrence of the behavior. To avoid a lop-sided score, a "Mercy Rule" was enacted. Once the score discrepancy reached a certain point, which was progressively higher with age of the participants, the scoreboard was zeroed-out. The scorekeepers at the table continued to track points, but not publicly. These modifications to the game procedures themselves took a while to get used to, but eventually became common practice and had a positive impact on the events.

Finally, new rituals were introduced after the games. A post-game "social" was instituted, with the home team bringing snacks for both teams, and the visiting team supplying drinks. Similar to the pre-game introductions, this was designed to help players and coaches get to know one another--to personalize the process and establish a common community. As players entered the room in which this social event was held, they indicated how much fun they had during that game using the "Fun-o-meter." The Fun-o-meter is a wooden box with five holes in it, numbered one through five. "One" was labeled "no fun" and "five" was labeled "lots of fun." Players took marbles that matched the color of their jerseys and placed the marbles into the holes that corresponded with how much fire they had. At the end of the social, these "votes" were counted and recorded for each team. Also during the social, each team voted on the player from the opposing team who demonstrated the best sportsmanship. These two players were given a certificate and a prize (T-shirt, small basketball, poster, etc.) and had their photo taken together, which was posted on the league's Web site. At the end of the season, each team voted for the overall best sport from their own team. These players received a certificate and a full-size basketball, and had their photos taken for the website.

While these additions and changes were implemented in a basketball league, they are not limited to one setting. PHPFPF principles are applicable in other areas as well. Just about any youth sports league or physical education class could apply these inexpensive and easy changes to their program.

Did It Work?

To evaluate the program, we interviewed staff of the community center, conducted written surveys of parents and players and recorded and analyzed data from our Fun-o-meter. The recreation center staff said that they received fewer complaints from parents about the league than ever before and that the PHPFPF program actually "made it less stressful." More importantly, the staff said that "kids started to make it a point of being more sportsmanlike, even if they were good to start with." Further, the staff noticed that kids in the PHPFPF program were playing differently in other programs offered by the center--suggesting that kids were transferring what was learned to other settings. Staff members were enthusiastic not only about repeating the program, but also extending it to soccer and other sports.

Parents thought their kids' sportsmanship improved as a result of playing in the PHPFPF program and most want their kids to play again next season. When asked to identify strengths of the program, teamwork, fair play, and sportsmanship (a "wholesome environment") were recurrent themes.

As for the kids, they tended to have more fun during close games (especially if their team won), which reinforces the need for balanced teams and the Mercy Rule. Kids' fun also seemed to be affected by the attitudes of the coaches--games with aggressive, load coaches tended to have lower fun scores. We've heard it before, but this reinforces the need to educate coaches and parents about sportsmanship and the impact of their behaviors on the children and their experiences playing sports.

Consider Jacob, who was a tough kid on a team sponsored by the government housing authority. No one came to watch him play on Saturdays. At the first social after the first game, the opposing team selected Jacob as the "Sportsman of the Week," for which he earned a T-shirt. He quickly wadded up the shirt, stuffed it in his jacket and shuffled out of the room. The following Saturday, Jacob's coach, who had daily contact with him through social services, approached us and said that Jacob had been a "completely different kid" that week. He'd worn his shirt every day and carried himself a little taller. He'd stepped up as a leader in that week's practice, and had encouraged his teammates to work together and have fun, and that's what youth sports should really be all about.

Table 1. Implement Your Own Department's
Play Hard, Play Fair, Play Fun Program

Before the season:   * A Assign players to teams using a method that
                       balances skills and experience levels.
                     * Implement an orientation session for parents,
                       coaches and referees with session and written
                       materials explaining sportsmanship focus of the
                       league.

Before the games:    * Distribute "play hard, play fair, play fun"
                       stickers for all players, coaches, parents,
                       spectators and referees.
                     * Require pre-game introductions-each player and
                       referee introduces him/herself and reminds
                       players of the common sportsmanship mission of
                       the league.
                     * Provide pre-game reminder to fans by referee or
                       league supervisor of common commitment to
                       sportsmanship.

During the games:    * Establish a "blue flag" system to alert all
                       present to offensive sportsmanship violations by
                       players, coaches or spectators.
                     * Encourage referees to call technical fouls
                       liberally for sportsmanship violations by
                       coaches, players and spectators.

After the games:     * Measure each players' level of enjoyment. (could
                       be with a "fun-o-meter")
                     * Coordinate and facilitate a post-game social.
                       Food provided by home team, drinks by visiting
                       team.
                     * Provide a post-game sportsmanship award chosen
                       by players of opposing teams (could include a
                       certificate, prize, photo on the website)
                     * Implement a "Sportsperson of the Year Award" per
                       team (selected by teammates).

On-going:            * Display "play hard, play fair, play fun"
                       banners in gymnasium
                     * Have a petition signed by players, coaches,
                       parents and officials that show a commitment to
                       sportsmanship.
                     * Provide coaches with t-shirts printed that say
                       "It's only a game."
                     * Create and maintain a league website with team
                       rosters and action photographs from each game.

All authors are affiliated with the University of Utah. Ellis, Wells, Parsley and Silverberg are in the Department of Parks, Recreation, and Tourism. Henderson is on the faculty of the Department of Exercise and Sport Science.