DVHS hosted 10 high schools at the second annual EBAL Sportsmanship Summit on Sept. 4. The high schools in attendance included San Ramon Valley, Foothill, Granada, Carondelet, California, Dublin, Amador Valley, De La Salle, Monte Vista and Livermore. Chosen athletes, cheerleaders, and athletic directors from each respective school also appeared as they discussed how to convey positive sportsmanship and good fan culture.
Sue Ellen Thomas, Athletic Director and Assistant Principal at DVHS, has been running this conference for about a year, and was in charge of deciding this year’s conference theme.
“We wanted to pinpoint fan behavior due to observations of bad behavior in the past,” Thomas said. “Our first one was on the broader concept of sportsmanship and was less tangible. I feel like we have a good nucleus of students who are on the same page as our goal,” said Thomas.
Each school has its own unique method of selecting students for the summit, but all of them have a common passion for sports. This is how the fan culture theme was determined, and soon enough the specific athletes and student sections were chosen by each respective school’s athletic director.
The summit was led by Coach Peter Wood, a former Stanford tennis player and head of the Positive Coaching Alliance team.
“We are going to be different this year,” Wood said, “but we will be better at it.”
Noting that every action taken is a step forward, Wood continued by saying “Sportsmanship is a huge part of honoring the game.” He focused on student voice and talked about the symbol of the Triple-Impact Competitor, which depicts the elm tree, teammates, and the game that are components of positive sportsmanship. The elm tree stands for for mastery, teammates who fill emotional tanks and the game that needs to be honored at all times.
“Behaving respectfully and treating self and others with dignity is very important,” Wood elaborated.
To create a sense of community and generate school spirit, a strong student section is needed. However, that can only be accomplished if positive etiquette is followed. Passion, spirit, determination, support, traditions and integrity are some of the qualities that produce the best student section, and can create the momentum required for a good game.
Student athletes invited to the summit further agreed with the concepts discussed.
“It’s important to control the controlables and [not] try to control what you can’t… this is in the sense of arguing with officials or getting into it verbally with the other team,” said Amador Valley Junior Biruk Menna.
“You are agents of change on your campus… to have moral courage is to stand up for what you believe in or think is right,” Wood concluded.
