I Pledge Allegiance……

Character Plus the Pursuit of Excellence equals Success

I hope that each and every one of us in our roles is proud to having been educated in American schools. If we aren’t, the students certainly won’t be. While its not a system without its problems, it does continue to provide society with creative, independent thinkers, most of whom live by a set of principles and ethics that were developed through the Interscholastic Educational process uniquely. I’m very proud to be able to make that statement, and I hope you are as well.

As has been said in many other forums, sportsmanship is one of those measures and a discipline of the interscholastic educational process and is critical to our understanding in terms of whether or not we have breadth or depth in any one individual program. It has been defined as abiding by the rules in both spirit and intent. It also means that you possess, according to Webster, the “ability to be gracious whether you win or lose.” It also purports and advances a fair playing field and a understanding of what it means to be correct in every conceivable situation in terms of loyalty, integrity, caring and essentially doing the right thing, by definition.

Do you think we don’t need sportsmanship? Because of all the contaminants we’ve experienced in our lifetime and the intervening variables which will have new looks but essentially will be the same, regardless of the generation, it gets more and more complicated. It seems that teaching and inculcating those values we consider synonymous with success, one of which is the grander scheme of conducting oneself in a sportsmanlike manner, gets more and more difficult.

You think we don’t need sportsmanship and it doesn’t transcend other aspects of life? Anna Nicole Smiths show is considered a hit in some circles. You think we don’t need a sense of fair play and depth?

You think WorldCom and Enron executives played fair? I don’t think so. 82% of executives who were golfers recently were surveyed and indicated they disliked people who cheat. Interestingly enough, almost 60% of those had cheated within the last year themselves, privately, on the golf course.

A recent survey study of high school kids over an eight year period in different trials found similar results when over 84% of those high school kids who responded indicated that the cheated at least once during their high school career. The more alarming part of that statistic is that over 50% of those felt that it was OK. You think we don’t need a better understanding and practice of loyalty, integrity and doing the right thing?

Lets explore our foundation. The genesis of Americans from a sociological perspective is that we are never satisfied with ourselves. Our system promotes and indeed encourages a restless attitude toward improvement. That’s the good side. Now, lets look at the genesis of Activities as it relates to the educational system. The Greeks, as far back as 776, emphasized the relationship between sound mind and sound body rather than winning and losing. The Romans, however (and we know what happened to that civilization), preferred a more spectacle approach, that is, an arena of unequal combat between gladiators, prisoners and animals.

While the Romans had a very Draconian approach, with the knights the became a little more humanistic and somewhat scholarly through that group. Their valor and tactical skills delighted crowds who reveled in the violence. The latter is presented to you a s demonstration of the metamorphosis of a series of societies and how sportsmanship has had different meanings attached to it through various eras.