[Griff]

It is a national affliction, so much so that Olympic Silver Medalist Tim Morehouse felt the need to address it.


It is Time for a Values Revolution in Youth Sports
December 23, 2014

It is time for a revolution in the way we evaluate our youth athletes. After seeing firsthand the poor behavior being demonstrated by some of our young fencers and their parents and coaches at our youth fencing tournaments, I felt compelled to share my thoughts on how we can change the sometimes hostile culture that has developed.

I know this topic goes beyond just the sport of fencing, but since I'm a fencer, I'm going to address the actions I think my own sport needs to take. I also want give the caveat that the vast majority of our young athletes, coaches and parents demonstrate great behavior but there is still too many bad incidents happening and not a sufficient system in place to deal with it. We need to do a better job handling bad sportsmanship, preventing repeats of bad behavior by individuals in addition to heading off incidents before they even escalate.

This is not just about punishing bad behavior, this is about teaching and rewarding good behavior. We need to start building new reward systems that value sportsmanship and that also emphasize mastery of the basic techniques and core principle of the sport. We can no longer solely rely on the amount of points they score and the matches they win or lose if we want to maximize the power of sport for our young athletes. Values need to play a prominent role.

In order to be leader in the youth sports community amongst all sports, I think fencing should create "Sportsmanship and Fair Play Commandments" for parents, coaches and students in addition to creating a new type of principle and skills based ranking system that is more focused on mastering basic principles than just wins and losses. Within these new systems, the referees of young fencers should be positioned as teachers as much as arbitrators of points and penalties.

In regards to the sportsmanship commandements, students, parents and coaches should have to know the list and sign it before every tournament. The new principle and skills based ranking system I'm also suggesting should include checklists of skills to master at different levels so our young fencers, and their parents, can better understand the core techniques and philosophies they should be working towards mastering in regards to form, strategy and basic fencing principles like distance and balance. By the way, these are also ultimately precursors to long-term winning on and off the fencing strip.

In addressing bad sportsmanship by parents, coaches and fencers, referees would have a system where they wouldn't necessarily have to give a black card during a bout for their to be some sort addressing of bad behavior or consequence. Referees after bouts could do a quick ranking of behavior, with notes if necessary, of the conduct of those groups and if multiple reports have been received then the athletes, parents and/or coaches, perhaps even a club with a trend of bad behavior(!) by students, coaches or parents, could be addressed for systematic bad behavior by the governing body or some sort of appoint commisioner.

Coaches, students and parents who continually violate the sportsmanship commandments should be unable to attend competitions for a certain period of time and should be given activities to earn their way back that demonstrate they now understand what behavior is expected. Imagine the dynamic that might shift at clubs to emphasizing good behavior on the strip if a whole club was at-risk for suspension for repeated bad behavior?

On the opposite end, we should reward good sportsmanship and create a system by which our athletes earn sportsmanship rankings in the youth tournaments. We could create a fun system and highlight good behavior with patches and public recognition. etc.

We need to be teaching more than the sport itself if we want to maximize what youth sports can be in the life of our child. We need to be teaching values. At the youth levels, it is less important that students win or lose and more important that they are mastering the basics of technique, tactics and sportsmanship.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not against keeping score or an advocate for removing the idea of winners or losers. I believe winning and losing is an essential and powerful teaching element of sports we don't want to lose. We want winning and losing in sports so we can teach our children how to handle it.

The referee element is hugely critical and refereeing is one of the most important, difficult and thankless jobs in sports. I would love to see our referees be able evaluate and give "scores" for technique, tactics and strategy for the competing fencers so that the referees can be included as "teachers" for our young fencers. Short written feedback from referees that could be given to young fencers and their parents at the end of the tournament might go a long way to changing how that relationship is viewed and make the learning experience of a tournament that much more powerful.

Let's make this happen! I look forward to piloting some of these ideas in the near future through my foundation Fencing In The Schools and to hearing your thoughts on these issues.

Yours,

Tim Morehouse
Founder of Fencing In The Schools
US Olympic Silver Medalist
www.morehouseusa.com