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Strength Of Character Often Emerges From The Sports Crucible The Gopher basketball team cheating scandal is the talk of the town. We roll our eyes and shake our heads. "Isn't it terrible? Can you believe it? College sports have become such a disgrace!" Then off we go to cheer our ninth-graders on the basketball court, or our fifth-graders on the hockey rink, feeling quite untainted. "This is what athletics should be," we nod. "Our kids are playing by the rules. They did their own homework." End of story. I'm new to the world of sports, having only recently become an observer through my children's involvement. I've enjoyed the experience greatly, thrilling to the drama of the games, and watching with satisfaction as skills and friendships grow. But sometimes, in my new role of basketball fan, I've wondered if high-school sports are really as distant as we think from the ethical swamp in which high-powered college sports seem to be mired. During this last season, I saw a number of disturbing signs. In one game I attended, for example, a player appeared to shove his opponent into the bleachers, and then pumped his fist in triumph, raising a cheer from his team's fans. In another, a player with a painfully injured wrist struggled valiantly to make several critical free throws. The opposing team's fans taunted and ridiculed him, as their parents sat by impassively. I've seen games where players kept up a rapid-fire stream of trash-talk and profanity-laden verbal intimidation. I've seen "stick-it-to-ya" wall posters draped behind the opposing team's bench -- "Trace Will Be in Your Face," "Jenny's a Stud" -- and T-shirts emblazoned with crude braggadocio: "Kickin Butt, Takin Names, And You Are?" "You Say You Can Beat Me. I Say Your Mama Raised a Fool." "Not Everyone's a Hero. So Why Don't You Sit on the Bench and Clap as I Go By?" In short, I've seen a number of examples of a single-minded drive to win through crass intimidation, swaggering self-promotion, and bending of the rules. The player who pumped his fist in triumph knew that he might have injured his opponent, and thereby gained an advantage for his team. Most likely, he suspected that his action had violated the rules, yet he -- and his fans -- seemed to glory in it. This boy may not yet be cribbing term papers, but he's on the road to ethical lapses no less profound. I suspect many parents are as dismayed as I am by this trend in high-school sports. Do we therefore turn our backs on the whole enterprise? I don't think so. Sports have a unique role to play in our young people's lives. Most of us no longer send our children out to the barn at 4:30 a.m. to start a 14-hour day of back-breaking labor. Few of us have marched them off to combat, as so many other generations have. But if our children are to navigate life's thornier challenges, they must develop a capacity for endurance under fire. Sports can help with this, for sports call forth qualities deep within young people that are far beyond the reach of the classroom. In our community, there are still people who view sports' role in this light. John Buri, varsity boys' basketball coach at Trinity School in Bloomington, is one. Buri is convinced that the primary purpose of sports is to build character -- specifically, to cultivate self-mastery. He cites the long, arduous work required to hone skills, and the crucible of intense, high-pressure games. He notes the myriad opportunities to develop dignity under duress, to learn to sacrifice for the team, and to practice keeping emotions in check in order to maintain focus on a goal. In Buri's view, today -- when young people respond to almost any question with a lackadaisical "whatever" -- sports can draw them on to giving their utmost in disciplined devotion to an enterprise larger than themselves. One of the most important aspects of self-mastery -- which Buri says we must recapture -- is humility. Forty years ago, basketball protocol encouraged humility by design. A player who committed a foul had to raise his hand. If he didn't raise it high enough, or slammed it down in disgust, the referees called him for a technical foul. This rule, now long gone, required a public submission to authority, and an acknowledgment of imperfection. Today, sports -- rightly approached -- can be much more than a passport to an exciting Friday night. Sports can lay the foundation of a drive for excellence that can extend throughout an entire life. Think of the young man mentioned above, who found himself on the free-throw line in the final moments of a hard-fought game, with a painful injured wrist. His shots were critical to his team's success, and he knew it. I saw him gather all his mental and physical resources -- betraying no anger at the taunts that filled the air, and utterly focused on his goal. Now imagine this same young man in 20 years. He's got a child with a serious illness, and is at a precarious point in his career. Somehow, he must find within himself the grit, the resolve, and the self-sacrifice to face another day with courage, determined to make the best of it. If that day comes, I suspect this young man's moments at the free throw line will stand him in good stead. -- Katherine Kersten is a director of Center of the American Experiment in Minneapolis. |