Part 1:
Read and answer the following questions based on the material covered in Unit 1 (Foundations and Identity, Competition and Cooperation, and Participant Development). Answer questions using class/web notes, text, readings packet, and your own information/experiences. Please TYPE your responses to all questions, unless noted.

1. Draw, label, and explain the Leisure Sports Management Model. Illustrate how mass participation shifts from active (player) participation to passive (spectator) participation. You may handwrite the "draw and label" portion of this question. (2 points)

2. List and describe the various settings where recreational sports can occur. (2 points)

3. Do you think competition is instinctive in humans or is it a learned behavior? Why? (3 points)

4. What do you think could be done to retain children who try competitive youth sports programs and then drop them permanently by the age of 18? (3 points)

5. Do you think that competition should be emphasized or de-emphasized in recreational sports? What are your reasons? (3 points)

Part 2:
Read the article, "Sportsmanship Takes a Dive in America" and respond to the following questions:

1. Provide at least 2 examples from the article of incidents where poor sportsmanship has led to violence at youth sport events. What impacts do you think this type of behavior has on the emotional development of kids who participate in youth sports? (2 points)

2. Define "moral reasoning" as it is described in the article. What is your reaction to the study that found that "on the average, the ability of 19 year old athletes to engage in moral reasoning is arrested (halted/stopped) at the level of a child in the sixth or seventh grade"? (2 points)

3. The article lists several quotes from famous American sports figures, including Knute Rockne's "Show me a good and gracious loser and I'll show you a failure" and Vince Lombardi's "Winning isn't everything, its the only thing." How do these quotes differ from the classic sports adage, "It isn't whether you win or lose, its how you play the game"? (2 points)

4. A study on youth sports participation, done in 1987, found that by age 15, 75% of those who played a youth sport no longer play it. Some studies have found the drop out rate to be around 80% by the age of 18. What are some reasons for this? (2 points)

5. Sports psychologist Tom Tutko of San Jose State University published an article stating the position that "there is no evidence that sports build character." What is your reaction to this statement? Do you agree or disagree with Dr. Tutko?  Why?  (3 points)

Part 3:
In your own words (one or two sentences) as a future sports administrator, provide a quote that sums up your views on what sports participation should be about. Is your quote more "Lombari-esque", is it more similar to the "classic sports adage" listed above, or is it somewhere in the middle? (1 point)

    Years after the late Vince Lombardi's dictum, "Winning isn't everything, its the only thing" and Knute Rockne's "Show me a good and gracious loser and I'll show you a failure", National Youth Sports Coaches' Association leaders say that in too many cases, sportsmanship in America has bottomed out. That ebb in ethics is not confined to Mike Tyson, Charles Barkley, John McEnroe and Bobby Fischer. It has, they say, infected too many high school and college sports programs. It also has become the bane of youth sports, in which some coaches and parents treat 10-year olds as if they were adults who haul in bloated salaries and are responsible for the team owner's take at the gate.
    Anti-sportsmanship "Civility, empathy, and understanding are the core of sportsmanship," and by that standard, "we're not just devoid of sportsmanship, we're anti-sportsmanship," says Tom Tutko, a psychology professor at San Jose State University, who was the keynote speaker at the coaching association's summit in San Antonio in late August. The summit was held to share information on American sportsmanship, or lack thereof.
    "Being a good sport is really very simple," Tutko writes. "It is the Golden Rule -- do unto others as you would have others do unto you. Sportsmanship is more than a series of behaviors -- it is an attitude. It is based on honesty, fairness, and humanness toward others. Sportsmanship's great enemy is the 'win at all costs' attitude so many parents, coaches, and players adopt, which sacrifices the great moral value of sportsmanship."
    "NYSCA's purpose for sponsoring this national summit was to help further define the National Standards for Youth Sports for youth leagues across America," states Bob Bierscheid, Chairman of NYSCA's  National Board of Directors. "Our mission is to encourage every league to implement these standards. Then and only then will we have begun to bring the proper focus on sportsmanship that is needed in youth sports."
    "A lot of youth coaches will walk in with the mistaken idea that the way they coach on TV is the way that youth leagues should be run as well," says Frank Martin, executive director of the association's Texas chapter whose city hosted the summit. "That is," he said, "you're paid to win. You're there to coach the winning team, and if you don't, you're going to get fired." He added, "Youth sports has always mirrored society."
    Consequently he was saddened, but not surprised, when a Little League brawl in Albuquerque this summer flared into a mini-riot which adults picked fights with child baseball players from opposing teams. In Indiana, a Little League manager clubbed a rival manager with a baseball bat, and in California, an umpire stopped a game after angry parents threatened him with knives.
    Some parents have sued youth coaches for not letting their children play enough, which they charge has stunted their kid's development into highly paid professional athletes. "I think some of these people might not know what the real reasons for Little League are. Its for the kids," Carl Stolz, who in 1939 founded the first Little League in Williamsport, PA, told the editors of Youth Sport Coach.
    Restoring that truth to youth sports, and teaching the fundamentals of sportsmanship and fair and safe play, are top priorities of the coach training program the National Youth Sports Coaches Association founder Fred Engh began in 1981, and which has begun to blossom across the country.
    In 1987, when Dr. Vern Seefeldt and Martha Ewing surveyed 26,300 youngsters between age 10 and 18 who lived in 17 metropolitan areas including Arlington and Brownsville, they found that the most important reason children play sports is to have fun. Winning was the least important of the 10 reasons the youngsters gave. By age 15, Seefeldt said, 75% of those who have played a particular sport no longer play it. "Coaches education is the single most important process that we can get involved in as leaders in sports experiences," he said. "Most coaches are generally unaware of the needs of the children and how to organize sports to meet the needs of children."

NYSCA As A Major Influence
    Six years ago, only 10,000 coaches nationwide paid $15 annual dues to enroll in the association's coach training program. The number today is close to 111,000 and a rapidly growing number of youth sports programs are requiring that their coaches receive the association's instructions before being allowed to coach a team. Summit panelist Daniel Doyle said in an interview, "I coached for nine years and never is (sportsmanship) discussed at clinics."
    To promote these aims, the non-profit and predominantly volunteer operated coaches' association has produced codes of ethics for coaches and parents, installed a grievance procedure through which coaches may be decertified for behavior at odds with association standards, and, at its national conventions and summits, gathered specialists to help create better child-oriented youth sports programs. Participants at the association's sportsmanship summit in San Antonio agreed that children enjoy sports most when they are taught and encouraged to sharpen their playing skills in an atmosphere of sportsmanship and fair play.
    "I think you get criticized if you come off as being sanctimonious and self-righteous," Doyle said.

Teach Sportsmanship
    Moreover, he said, more coaches and parents need to learn and teach sportsmanship to children, not so much to restore a value that American society has lost as to teach a value that he says may never have been there in the first place -- except maybe in the small town America.
    "I mean, heck, Ty Cobb was probably the worst sport who ever played professional baseball," Doyle said. "What I think we're doing is introducing an almost foreign concept to this country."
    As ethicist Dr. Sharon Kay Stoll put it, her high school coach once told her, "If you ain't cheating, you ain't trying." In studies conducted with college students, Stoll has found that on the average, the ability of 19-year old athletes to engage in moral reasoning is arrested at the level of a child in the sixth or seventh grade. She defines "moral reasoning" as the ability to think in terms of social contract theory and of caring broadly for one's fellow human beings.
    Washington Post sportswriter Mariah Burton-Nelson suggests that it would be helpful for Americans to incorporate more of a female perspective into sports. "Women are in danger of adopting the model that men usually use, which I call the military model of sport," she said. "I'm most interested in adopting some of the best of women's traditional values, (including) the partnership model of sports in which the opponent is not seen as the enemy, but as a facilitator, as a friend, as somebody who you are grateful to because they enable you to do your best," she said.
    However one looks at it, the importance of sportsmanship or fair play has gained more active recognition since the birth 11 years ago of the National Youth Sports Coaches' Association. This is partly a result of advancing knowledge in the fields of child psychology, sports medicine, and kinesiology.
    "But a large part of it has to do with a general recognition that things (in U.S. sports) have gotten progressively worse, like the violence and the neurotic behavior," Tutko said. "And the drugs," he added. "Its gotten to the point now that people are saying, 'there is something wrong here.'"
    Tutko says that when he published an article in 1976 in which he said, "we really don't have any evidence that sports builds character," he received 500 letters in response.

Communist Pinko
    Half the letter writers said: "You communist pinko. At the core of American character is sport. How can you say this?" The other half said: "We're praying for you."
    Eighteen years ago, when Tutko presented a paper in New York where he said that increasingly athletes cheated by using drugs, "somebody in the audience stood up and accused me of faking the data and lying," he said. "When I first started, I was literally booed off stages," he said. That has changed.
    "You couldn't have had this 15 or 20 years ago," he said of the association's sportsmanship summit. "Look at the audience you have here. These 300 or so people represent thousands of coaches."