Being one who lives and breathes basketball, the normal winter season ended a few days ago. Despite this I cannot say I can sit back and relax as the summer season is full of international commitments. However I would still like to put out a particular view I want to share, a view which springs to my mind whilst contemplating on the present local general situation. I tend to believe that poor sportsmanship is the number one problem in local sports today.

At times, civilised behaviour among players, coaches, spectators and anyone involved with the game is at low tide. My opinion is that something needs to be done about it.

One would ask why I decided to discuss such a topic today. The main deciding factor in leading me to do so was a discussion I had just a few days ago with a particular person who is a parent of a young basketball player. This individual became quite emotional, angry and irritated whilst discussing with me one of his child’s final game sin the season as he alleged that there was some lack of decorum by a referee.

My reaction, based primarily to calm the environment but also to put forward, in an easy way, the values I believe in was to tell the parent that there are basically two things that players, especially children, need to learn, not only in basketball but practically in any sport.

The first is a sense of values, basically teamwork, discipline and determination. The other thing is that the player learns to deal with any form of adversity.

On the latter, I joked by saying that just as sometimes the ball makes a bad bounce, likewise the referee sometimes does not make the right decision.

Mentioning children and youths I would like to share with you an interesting, in my opinion, feature I saw lately.

This is what is being termed as the TEAM method of building character in young sportsmen and sportswomen.

Quoting the original report, TEAM stands for teach, enforce, advocate and model.

By teach one implies that young athletes should be taught that their character counts. Their long term success depends on who they are inside and not on how they look or how much they have.

Whilst discussing the enforcing issue, the report goes on to say that one should aim to instill the so-called six pillars of character, namely trustworthiness, re respect, responsibility, fairness, caring and citizenship. Ideally this is achieved by rewarding good behaviour with praise and discouraging bad behavior with consequences.

The “A” in TEAM stands for advocate and this refers to the need for an athlete to be an advocate for character. One should not act casual in front of improper, inappropriate or indecent conduct

If then one is self-conscious about everything he says or does then he could develop in a good role model for those around.

One major consequence, in my opinion, of bad parenting where child athletes are involved (I deem it as very serious and which demands sound thought as it is basically a matter of possibly affecting permanently a child in the long-term) is that preconditioning children to value only final results in sports competitions robs them from the joy of spontaneous play and learning new skills in a positive environment.

When parents and coaches spend all their time focused on the scoreboard, they are bound to lose sight of their real purpose. It is not about winning but to teach and guide our children and youths in skill development in their sport of choice, to provide encouragement, to build self-esteem and to have fun!

These are the true values we have to pass to our youths.

However the reality can show otherwise. It has become clear (when talking to fellow referees and administrators from different sport disciplines) that the number of parents who engage in verbal abuse and also physical contact during youth games is on the increase.

I feel sorry for those true parents who really respect their children and act accordingly, only to find some ‘nitwits’ who ruin everything by their aggressive and immature behaviour. In these circumstances, I am totally in favour that parents who become verbally or physically abusive during games should be banned, immediately, from youth sports.

The worst scenario I can possibly imagine is that these children will grow to model these behaviours in their adult lives.

This is not far-fetched as when parents become overly invested in their children, the child becomes confused as to why and who they are doing the activity for. Thus, in the long run, the child thinks that the activity is more important to the parent than it is to them.

We must always remember that our children and youths are the future cream of our sports environment.

The early development year are highly crucial and yet fragile and one needs to be careful to instill the right attitudes and attributes so that we may have better sportsmen then those around today.

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