Cheering without Jeering

For all FWCD teams, I continue to ask coaches, players and parents to clear a high bar, a bar I have to remind myself from my sideline seat in particularly exciting contests. I am an enormous fan of our Southwest Preparatory Conference (SPC) Sportsmanship Awards. I guess it is not very sportsmanship-y of me, but I covet those awards, for individual athletes and especially for the team awards. I want us to win games, races and championships, and I want us to be known as the school with the remarkably respectful student-athletes and adult community members. 

My standard is for FWCD to be the school that “Cheers but does not Jeer.” Knowing there is always the heat-of-the-moment challenge leading to the occasionally regrettable comment, our modus operandi should consistently be in keeping with the SPC standards: “Member Schools, including their players and coaches, are expected to represent themselves, their school, and the SPC at all times with honor, respect and good sportsmanship. Competitive rivalries among Member Schools are encouraged, but disrespectful behavior toward opponents is unsportsmanlike and lessens the value of athletic competition. Member Schools, including their players and coaches, are also expected to behave respectfully toward and fully comply with the rulings of contest officials.”

Coaches, in my mind, have the largest leeway to address concerns with officials, especially as relates to student safety. Parents, guardians and players do not have special license to share their opinions vocally about whether a call was good or bad. I worked with an Athletic Director years ago who always addressed seventh grade parents at the start of their child’s days representing the school in athletic competitions. Her narrative with these new-to-school-competition families was about our expectations for referees. The highest-paid referees at the professional and collegiate levels make mistakes, she would point out. Being further down the experience and quality scale, our high school referees are going to make a lot more mistakes. When you get to referees of seventh grade games? Our expectations should not be exceptionally high of these refs, and nor are the consequences of good and bad calls especially high, in the big picture. 

I hope we keep our eyes on the goal of being the “Cheerers” and not the “Jeerers,” that we support our teams and athletes with all we’ve got, and that, otherwise, we leave our opponents to be supported by their fans and our referees to be appreciated for being willing to make such a measly amount of money to do a very difficult job.