Sportsmanship and Rivalries 

There are a lot of tremendous rivalries in the history of sport. There are Olympic rivalries going back 3,000 years and revived with those modern games in 1896. There are World Cup soccer rivalries dating back to the 1930s for men and the 1990s for women. There are college athletic rivalries going back more than a century in some cases. 

Pick your sport and your college or country; some of those rivalries have, perhaps, been heated and even ugly at times. The rivalries to admire, though, are those that involve deep mutual respect. That respect often has to be nurtured. A rivalry runs the risk of eroding over time if the rivals are not intentional about leading with respect. Most often, even in the most heated of rivalries, the athletes demonstrate respect; it’s the fans that can get carried away. 

Rivalries are good. They motivate us to do our best. They give us the best that competition has to offer: a motivation to maximize your efforts, to see how you match up, and, hopefully, to be proud (and humble) winners.

We are fortunate in our Upper School sports conference, the Southwest Preparatory Conference (SPC), that there is a significant focus on sportsmanship.

I am proud to be a part of SPC. I appreciate that member schools all have similar academic and character values. When a few heads of school started the league in 1952, they were specifically looking to emulate the Ivy League, a group of schools that all shared high academic standards and wanted to have the best athletic competition they could with like-minded schools. SPC also made sure that the heads of their schools would meet, face-to-face, all together, every sports season. We benefit from holding each other accountable. 

When SPC adopted its sportsmanship awards in 2021-22, the league was furthering its commitment to excellence. We can be so proud of our FWCD varsity teams that have been honored by our rivals with recognition of our sportsmanship: This far, early in the history of that award, our girls field hockey, basketball and softball, and boys tennis teams have each been honored with the award once, and boys volleyball has earned the sportsmanship cup two times. Individuals in each sport are also honored by the league:  Join me in congratulating the latest Falcon recipients of SPC sportsmanship honors: Carly Walker ’24 (soccer), Chappell Carter ’25 (wrestling), Harini Mukka ’23 (cross country) and Liam Callahan ’23 (boys volleyball).

And as we recognize that sportsmanship, let us remember that we expect of each other a continued commitment to SPC's high standards. We will occasionally slip. Our rivals will occasionally slip. But those slips are not an invitation to go low. It is exactly when a team or its fans violate the high expectations that we are called, by FWCD’s core values of respect and integrity, to take the high road. Our student-athletes make us proud, playing hard and competing with honor. They thrill us with championships, of course, but while we will not always have things line up for a championship run, we will always have the opportunity to be recognized for our sportsmanship.