Students talk about building sportsmanship when Mount Si High School hosts 200-athlete countywide Interhigh prorgram

More than 200 student athletes from around King County gathered at Mount Si High School on Wednesday Nov. 16, to develop a sportsmanship program that could be used in any sporting event throughout the KingCo league.

Mount Si Athletic Director Ray Wilson said the goal of the forum was to let the students get to know each other and understand how poor behavior at league games can affect other people. The students were broken up into groups with students from different schools to encourage interaction with people they didn’t already know.

In groups, the students worked together to answer questions on the importance of sportsmanship, such as how student leaders can create and maintain a positive environment and how to identify the biggest challenges in creating that environment.

“Off the field, we’ve got to get along with one another and be ambassadors of the sports,” Wilson said. Elements of that include “Treating people with respect,” he said, using schools’ athletic programs to build relationships between students, “and positive relationships at that.” The goal is “to remind kids they are an example of our community and their behavior often times (reflects on) our student body and our community.”

The Interhigh event was led by Patrick Brown, athletic director of Squalicum High School in Bothell, who has been leading sportsmanship forums in Washington for the past six years. Brown said he doesn’t just speak to the students about sportsmanship, but gets them to engage in conversation about it, making the lessons they learn more meaningful and engaging.

“I told them why I was there, I went through my presentation, but then it’s … mostly (the students) working,” Brown said. “They have to share out stories of both positive and negative sportsmanship. They shared out some really important, poignant negative stuff, it’s good to hear that stuff.”

To end the event, each of the groups takes the sportsmanship program they developed during the forum and presents it to the other groups, coaches and athletic directors.

Brown said this interactive sportsmanship forum is very important to helping change sports culture for the better, but is only the first step. The students need to take their plans back to their schools and implement these changes in the way people behave themselves.

“It takes that kind of effort where you have to work with every constituent group, its the band, the cheerleaders, the parents, the student section and the teams,” he said.

“The work has just started, take this back to your communities, because implementation comes back to the school level.”