What do kids learn from sports? That depends. It depends on where this “learning” takes place.
If they watched the third game in the 2003 baseball playoffs between the Red Sox and the Yankees, they saw a series of brawls.
The Good, the Bad, the Out of Bounds
If they watched the news, they'd find Los Angeles Laker star basketball player Kobe Bryant accused of rape.
But maybe our youngsters are learning about sports by actually playing themselves, in physical education classes and on teams in high school, in middle school, in elementary school.
Yet, bad things can happen in youth sports, too. After one baseball game, one young boy was hit with a bat in a post-game fight. It killed him. That was in the news, too. So was the case of an angry parent who beat an ice hockey coach to death.
So what are kids learning from sports? We asked some people who are in the sports “business” — several coaches, an NFL football player and a sports minister.
The first question: “Could a child learn some wrong values from sports?”
“Sometimes, kids could pick up that there is a win-at-all-costs attitude,” says Joe Zelenka, long snapper and tight end for the Jaguars NFL team in Jacksonville.
“Kids are getting the idea that their worth is based on playing time. That seems to be what parents are concerned about,” says Vicki Gafford, athletic director and coach at San José Parish in Jacksonville.
“They can lose perspective of what's important,” says Michael P. Gillespie, head athletic and basketball coach at Florida A&M University in Tallahassee.
In professional sports, “the money's so big, it's kind of nuts,” says Ed Hastings, a former Villanova basketball player and director of the Center for Sport, Spirituality and Character Development (CSSCD) at Neumann College, Aston, Pennsylvania.
So the answer seems to be “yes,” our young people could learn the wrong values from sports.
This is why the University of Notre Dame has established the Mendelson Center for Sports, Character and Community. Notre Dame has also teamed up with Neumann College's CSSCD to create a Sports Ministry Partnership (SMP). Their goal is to bring a faith-based approach to Catholic youth sports programs to parishes across the country.
“The way things are going, if we continue exploiting sports, it's not going to be around for future generations to enjoy,” says Hastings.
Instead, he says, “We should allow sports to continue to be fun for young people. The idea is to develop a person's talent to its fullest, to bring out the best in one another. We can use sports to teach values in the best Catholic tradition.”
The Team that Prays Together
Part of that tradition is celebrating and participating in Mass together. Jaguar Joe Zelenka says, “We have Mass before every game. We did with Coach Tom Coughlin and now with Coach Jack del Rio.”
Back in Cleveland, Ohio, when Zelenka played for Cleveland Benedictine High School (operated by the Benedictine monks of St. Andrew Abbey) there was Mass before every game and when the team went by bus to a game, the team prayed the rosary together on the bus.
Zelenka says he still finds himself praying the rosary before a game.
He also says he hasn't forgotten the order of things. “First, faith, then education and then athletics. That's the right pecking order: God, family and friends, and athletics.”
Zelenka points out that young people should realize that they won't be playing in sports all their lives. Being an NFL player is a dream come true for Zelenka, but he says, “This is a short-term thing. It's a blessing that I get to do it at all.”
Gillespie says, “I think the Lord doesn't care who wins or loses. It's too much about winning and losing. In the grand scheme, who really cares? But you should have a commitment and dedication and want to explore the role of God in your life.”
Like Hastings, Gillespie sees spirituality in sports. “The thing the Lord cares about is: do you strive to be the best Christian every day? In sports you've got to work at it every day. And the spiritual person has to work on his or her spirituality every day. It takes togetherness, hard work, and dedication.”
Pat McMahon is head baseball coach for the University of Florida. He was a student at Bishop Kenny High School, where he was later head coach. And before that he was a student at Sacred Heart Parish in Jacksonville where the Sisters of Mercy were, he says, “tremendous role models.”
McMahon went on to say that, “To me, competition is playing against yourself to get better. When you play a game there are two teams and one or the other is going to lose. You've got to accept the outcome.”
McMahon adds, “There are many forms of winning. The process of competing and learning is part of the success equation.”
At the End of the Game
Gafford says, “At the base is self esteem. The players learn their role, they learn to be there for the team, and then through this they grow as an individual. They learn to work on their weaknesses and to appreciate their strengths.
“Children have different talents; God doesn't give everybody the same talents and may not reward everybody the same. There are different rewards. In sports, the reward may come at the end of the season, when you realize what you've learned,” she says.
Gafford says children today rarely enjoy pick-up games and the creativity learned in those games. Today's youth sports are highly organized and children have come to expect a uniform, special athletic shoes, a league team and sports field before playing a game.
Brenda Light Bredemeier, co-director of the Mendelson Center, has written, “Today, most of children's sport opportunities are organized by adults, coached by adults, refereed by adults, and watched by adults. The worlds of children and adults are merged today as never before, in ways that are sometimes scary to me as a lover of children.”
In a recent survey of 30 dioceses, Hastings says, coaches cited problems with the adults, the parents, as one of their top concerns.
“In my generation, we didn't rehash the game in the car going home,” Gafford says. “Today, there is what we coaches call the 'station wagon syndrome.' It's the parents' post-game analysis. Try to do this and try not to do that. Kids can be torn between what mom and dad say and what the coach says. It's all very confusing to the kids. Really, kids bounce right back. They can lose a heartbreaker and in a few minutes they are fine. But today, win or lose, they hear about it all the way home.”
Hastings says, “We've got to ask questions like: 'Are we treating our opponents as the gospel calls us to do?' We're trying to have parents try to remember that these are young people. They sometimes forget that and after the game there's 'the ride home.' Parents are concerned about how many points they scored or whether they'll get their name in the paper. It should be: 'Did you have a good time?'”
McMahon's simple advice is, “At the end of each game the parents should hug their kids and tell them they did a great job.”
Parents may have the best motivations, coaches say. For example, a good athlete could get a scholarship to high school, as well as college. Parents want the best for their children and a professional sports career usually means top-dollar salaries, fame and glory. Or, parents may be trying to live out their own fantasies through their children's talents.
With that in mind, it's possible that parents don't see the spirituality in sports. But historically, sports performance was based on the spiritual, Hastings says. For example, the Greeks held the original Olympics to praise or appease their gods.
“We often look at the end result, not the steps,” McMahon says. “There are many parallels between sports and faith.”
“Sports are like a spiritual journey, it is a process,” says McMahon. All sports require the fundamentals, as does our faith, so that when we hit the bumps in the field or in our lives, we have the strength of faith to get us through difficult times, McMahon says.
“As you get older,” Zelenka says, “Your faith grows with you. Faith becomes the mainstay in your life. It's the mainstay in my life and in my wife Rebekah's life. Our faith is the backbone for us. I think my faith allows me, even though we might not see eye-to-eye, to love others and to be close to them. My faith also brings me a sense of peace.”
To learn more about: the Mendelson Center for Sports, Character & Community at Notre Dame visit www.nd.edu/~cscc/ or email [email protected]. The Mendelson Center also offers an Institute for Coaching and Education. For more information about the Center for Sports, Spirituality and Character Neumann College email: [email protected].
Chelle Delaney is the associate editor of the St. Augustine Catholic magazine for the Diocese of Saint Augustine in Florida.
This article previously appeared in the St. Augustine Catholic, www.staugcatholic.org/, and is used by permission.
