As NJ high school sportsmanship continues to be an issue, one league takes initiative
By Darren Cooper / NorthJersey.com
NEW MILFORD − There were 12 scenarios presented of inappropriate behavior. There could have been 12,000.
Student-athletes from across the 36-team North Jersey Interscholastic Conference gathered at New Milford High School on Tuesday morning for a sportsmanship summit organized by conference administrators and the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association.
It wasn’t just about examples of bad behavior which have seemingly become so common place, but how to respond in real time.
New Milford athletic director Joe Ricciardelli and Park Ridge athletic director Chris Brown were instrumental in pushing legislation forward at the state level to create a spectator code of conduct for students, parents and coaches at high school sporting events. Now, every one of the 440 NJSIAA member schools has to have its own spectator policy by the end of the year.
Tuesday was about informing the students of the policy, the punishments, the reasons behind it and, most importantly, how they can help.
“We know its hard to make a stand,” Brown said. “But if you don’t do it, who is going to?”
“It’s our goal at the end of the day, besides learning about sportsmanship, but it’s for you to be an ambassador going forward,” Ricciardelli said. “It’s important that you share what you learned today.”
NJSIAA executive director Colleen Maguire made the trip north −proof of the importance of this issue at the state level − and delivered off-the-cuff remarks about how sportsmanship is one of her three main focuses as leader of the state’s athletic association.
Maguire also discussed how three disqualifications from one team during a season means a team is then disqualified from state-tournament play.
Maguire said that the sport with the highest number of disqualifications statewide is boys soccer. Football, baseball, boys lacrosse and ice hockey are also high on the list.
“We have 450-500 DQs a year across all the sports and with all the kids we have, when you do the math, it’s a small percentage, but they’re important,” Maguire said. “We want to see decreasing trends, not increasing.”
It’s impossible to ascertain perfect data on incidents at scholastic sporting events because there are many, especially at the sub-varsity level that are not overseen by a site manager or athletic director. One school can have multiple events going on at once, and it’s impossible for one person to see everything.
Tuesday was retail politics by the NJIC. A chance for the league to get more student-athletes on board.
To that end, groups from each of the five NJIC divisions gathered to discuss appropriate behavior for each of the 12 scenarios presented. Among the situations were what to do when a parent is coaching from the stands, when a fan is visibly intoxicated or when there is a physical altercation in the stands.
The groups were then asked to discuss their answers. A lot of them were basic − tell the ref, tell the coach, find the AD − but the point was to make that connection, if they see something happening that is unsafe, remind the kids know they have tools to help.
“We have to have a lot of reminders, coaches meetings, I am at every game,” Ricciardelli said. “When I go to games, I will stand on the sidelines, and we will remind our coaches to act appropriately. I think the results are starting to show.”
The seminar also discussed how officials should be treated with respect and that referees are really just community servants trying to do the best job they possibly can and approach each event with no bias.
Social media came up, of course. Athletic directors have long been trying to fight the tide of harsh language directed at opposing schools from non-sanctioned sites. There’s really only so much they can do about that problem.
“The constant mocking on social media of officials who are being berated and disrespected or attacked after contests, physically or verbally, these things have to stop,” NJIC executive director Stan Fryczynski said.
It was repeated throughout the morning that the kids chosen to attend had been hand-selected by their schools because they had already demonstrated leadership ability. Fixing the angry tone of high school sporting events is a job too big for one person. The more kids aligned and committed to fixing these issues the better.
