By Emalee Evans
(November 21, 2024)

The middle school volleyball team I coach competed in our conference tournament not long ago. This is our version of districts, and you can believe that the athletes, coaches, and parents came with high expectations and a fair number of nerves. The tournament started, and I could see and feel that our team was not playing how we normally did. We made it to the championship game, but it was not going our way. I started to get frustrated with the calls the referee was making. I caught myself reacting in a way that I was honestly not proud of, and it shocked me. I had this realization that I would never yell at another person like I was yelling at the ref, and I never would have done it as an athlete. So, when did it become okay for me to react that way as a coach? The respect that I would normally show towards another person and my desire to fight for my team clashed. I disregarded something that I usually consider extremely important in my life by putting winning a game above respecting others.

I value being respected as a coach, by my athletes, my athletes’ parents, the referees, and from fellow coaches. When I feel disrespected it is something that I notice and remember. There have been many times throughout the last few years when opposing coaches refused to acknowledge me as an equal, generally because of my age. Being treated this way has since reminded me of my actions at the tournament. I was not showing the referee appreciation in a space that I also strive to feel respected in. Our season is over, but now I have time to ponder on ways that I can improve my choices and find ways that I can encourage moral development in myself and my athletes.

Sports provide us with constant opportunities to make moral or immoral choices. I know I have made moral exceptions in past situations because I felt like it was a part of the game, or because “everyone else was doing it” (Kretchmar, 1994, p. 239). When I played there were many times that I touched the volleyball but said nothing when it landed out of bounds and my team got the point. There have been many times as a coach that I have seen my athletes do the same thing. This behavior is the culture of volleyball, an aspect of the game that we accepted and taught to athletes. We would be hard-pressed to find a coach who expects their athletes to confess to the ref every time they touch the ball or hit the net. We might think of this as a strategy to gain an edge by outwitting the referee. Stoll (2012) tells us that it might instead be deception, a word that feels much less sport-friendly. “Not only do we teach them how to outwit the opponent, we also teach them how to outwit the referee” (Stoll, 2012, p.3). This can be a startling thought; the point of encouraging youth to participate in sport is often for character development, right? We can also define this behavior as morally callous, certain behaviors that we have gotten so used to doing that we no longer see it as unethical, even if we would not condone it in other areas of our lives (Kretchmar, 1994).

Research tells us that athletes who participate in team sports are ranked the lowest in moral development (S. Stoll, personal communication, September 2024). However, there is a way to remedy this. David Meyer (2018) tells us that gaining awareness can help when trying to make moral decisions. For me, this came as a sigh of relief; I do not want to dedicate my life to something that I love but lose myself while doing it. I also do not want to influence my athletes to make immoral choices. So, I asked myself what I would do when I faced a future immoral problem. Coaches, athletes, and spectators are told that we should respect the referee and the opposing team, but how often do we see consequences when we do not treat those individuals as we should? I realized my actions towards the referee were not what I wanted to continue to promote as a coach.

I know that I will never be perfect, but now that I am more aware that when I have moral callouses, I can catch myself and make changes for the future. I hope to encourage the moral choices of my athletes, even when it feels like it might be detrimental to a game. I will show them that if they make a moral choice that causes us to lose a point, I will not be disappointed in them. I want sports to be bigger than the contest. I want athletes to develop into amazing people who will make big differences, and as coaches, I think we can help them get there if we have the right priorities at the forefront of the culture that we create. I suggest that we, as coaches, all commit to questioning our actions. Ask ourselves if the way we react to situations is really what we should be doing and dedicate the time to making positive changes. Sports, especially youth sports, are a place where athletes can develop and learn who they are. Sports can still be fun and competitive while teaching athletes lessons that will benefit them throughout their entire lives. If we want this to be the case, we, as coaches, need to hold ourselves to a higher standard and be the role models they can emulate.

References

Kretchmar, R. S. (1994). Practical philosophy of sport. Human Kinetics.

Meyer, D. M. (2018). Urban Meyer, Ohio State football, and how leaders ignore unethical behavior. Harvard Business Review, 18-22.

Stoll, S. K. (2012). The effects of athletic competition on character development in college student athletics. Journal of College and Character, 13(4). https://doi.org/10.1515/jcc-2012-1939