Sportsmanship is becoming a lost value. We see it in professional sports, college, and high school levels. Poor sportsmanship is rampant in INFC basketball and football, whether the team is winning or losing. One of the benefits of children playing organized sports is to learn the values of teamwork, sportsmanship, and respect for others. The lack of respect for Coaches, Refs, and other players is out of control. We need to be better at encouraging these values as members of INFC, we owe it to our boys to teach better, so they can be better. Football is a rough sport, we all know this. But CHILDREN maliciously trying to injure other CHILDREN needs to stop. I wanted to post this LAST season when a player intentionally KICKED my son through the facemask after he sacked their quarterback & KNOCKED OUT 2 of his MOLARS that were not ready to come out yet, and yes he had his mouthpiece in. This is after he had already taken a punch through his face mask (never came off the field, just brought his teeth to his coach & kept playing). It is so bad I could list 100 examples in the last two years against our players. It is OUT OF CONTROL. The cussing, the fighting, rude behavior to refs. Is this how we want these BOYS to become as YOUNG MEN? Now is our chance to shape these boys & they are doing this because some may be encouraged to or simply allowed to.  We are in the position to shape these boys & we are doing a disservice to them & our society. For some of these boys it may be their best chance of learning good values. What is the point of shaking hands after the game when you spent the entire game displaying the WORST sportsmanship. I intentionally did not call out specific ball clubs, that wasn't the point to this post. The point to this post is a reminder to encourage sportsmanship. It's early in the season, and we all can do better, including myself. It's an emotional sport, we are human, we make mistakes, the players are CHILDREN, and are very moldable.  What are you molding this season? I'm going to try & do better & I hope many of you will too. It's early in the season, it's not how we start, it's how we finish! We've got this! We will do better together.

Chieftain Pride, Thank you for your comment, it renews my faith that someone in INFC cares about sportsmanship. Over 400 views & you are the only one to comment. I suspect most people checked the post to see if their team was mentioned, due to a guilty conscious. Others probably checked to see if any specific teams were mentioned, that they had experienced bad sportsmanship from. I suppose I may have gotten more interest if I mentioned the teams with poor sportsmanship. It really is a serious topic that needs to be addressed by the coaches  & parents. The lack of interest in this topic is very telling.

Sooner, you are so right. This forum is quiet & for the most part very respectful. My intentions were to bring awareness to the issue. With all the views I think it has. It's always good to be reminded. There is always room for improvement, for me also. Our team also encourages good sportsmanship, but it is difficult when blatant unsportsmanlike conduct is condoned by people in leadership, and unfortunately I saw it with Refs not addressing it when it was flagrant and unacceptable. On the other side, I really enjoy seeing examples of good sportsmanship & people notice. I love it when I see some of our Refs in Basketball & Football chumming it up with the kids and engage in teachable moments with the kids. Keep up the good work, because sportsmanship is a direct reflection of parenting & coaching, and people notice. I always tell my kids, if you do something that looks bad, it makes me look bad. Good luck this season.

There are some bad examples for coaches sure, but lets be honest there a bad examples of parents too.  I'm going to guess if this happened that the Edmond coaches didn't have a 15 minute practice session last week on scratching kids.  An overall team mentality is set by coaches, but kids do things all the time on their own.  A dirty mentality or poor sportsmanship from an individual is a parent thing.  And sometimes I see a late hit or facemask that looks bad, but I don't put that on the coach.  Now if the coach is applauding it, then it's a issue, but usually I see coaches getting on kids for doing things like that or not wanting to shake hands etc.