By JOHN HUBBARD – Variety Writer
Cartoon by Audrey Hinkle.
In the competitive world of sports, tensions are high, tempers are flared and priorities of players are sharpened down to two real goals: personal achievements and winning the game.
No matter the sport, every match, game and meet demands a high level of integrity and sportsmanship, which in recent times, are often overlooked.
During a Pennsylvania high school football game a serious line was crossed.
Annville-Cleona High School played against Hamburg Area High School, and what ensued can be found here. Hamburg’s player, Joey Cominsky, attacked Annville-Cleona’s Josh Hartman by removing Hartman’s helmet and striking him in the head with it.
Some confrontations in sports are encouraged (hockey, baseball etc.). In hockey, fights are permitted, as long as knees don’t touch the ice and players’ jerseys aren’t removed. Even in basketball, disputes are common (don’t mess with Metta). But still, sportsmanship is and should be an ideal brought up at a very early time in an athlete’s life.
But it’s not.
From the ages of five to 13, I played little league at Holland Park in Athens, Ga. I went through several coaches through the years as I made the transformation from games pitched by machines to kid pitchers, and as talent is built within the players, one thing is lost: sportsmanship.
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At a younger age, sportsmanship was stressed and implied in the game of baseball, and slowly, over time, it became less and less about playing a fair, respectful game. It became more about winning.
This is not a trend exclusive to baseball, all competitions in sports have a similar focus. Players will do whatever it takes to win, even if it means throwing your respect and integrity out of the window, or hitting your opponent in the head with a helmet.
In football, a serious contact sport, tension is built among offensive and defensive lines, and, understandable disagreements ensue, but boundaries must be respected.
As seen in the video, these boundaries were obviously forgotten, but it wouldn’t be fair to resort to a ‘crisis in sports’ accusation because what happened is one case out of the thousands of football games played every Friday night.
Emphasis on sportsmanship and respect is the real loss in this situation, and it should be reinstated in coaches’ minds across the country. If you can’t respect the implied rules of the game, you can’t play the game.
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