The sports pages are rife with stories about athletes who wouldn't know the definition of sportsmanship if their agents told them a correct response would guarantee a $10-million signing bonus and use of the owner's Gulfstream jet.
True, Charles Barkley makes a strong argument that ballplayers are not role models, but is a little sportsmanship too much to ask for?
For the past two months 440 youngsters from grades six through eight have competed in the Kiwanis Club youth basketball league, a league that has been striving to instill a sense of sportsmanship in its pint-sized participants for almost 60 years.
The season ended Thursday, and throughout the year teams not only earned points for layups, foul shots and jumpers, they scored for treating their adversaries with respect.
"Basically, it's not who wins the game but how you treat the other team," said Margi Cates, who played in the girls' eighth-grade division on a team made up of pupils from Sussex and C.S. Porter schools. "We want them to be our friends, not our archenemies."
At each game the two referees, a scorekeeper and a timekeeper rated teams for their sportsmanship with a point system ranging from 0 for "really bad" to 4 for "superior." It's a practice instituted about five years ago when games got too competitive, according to longtime Kiwanis Club basketball committee chairman Bill Fischer.
At a banquet in April the Dr. F. Gordon Reynolds sportsmanship award will be presented to the team from each of the nine divisions that accumulates the highest average score and best displays "adherence to rules, fair play, courtesy, striving spirit, and grace in defeat or victory." It's the league's highest honor.
"We mainly like to see them get exercise and learn something about team play and sportsmanship," said Fischer. "It's something to do other than getting in trouble."
But the program, which was formed in Missoula in 1944 by then Kiwanis Club president Jack Burgess and Reynolds, also is a community-minded endeavor for fun.
Thirteen elementary schools and several home schools supply the league with its talent, attracting kids from as far away as Frenchtown, Potomac and Florence to gyms at Lewis and Clark Elementary School, Washington Middle School and Meadow Hill Middle School most week nights. They play on such teams as the Sussex Red Peacheaters (sixth-grade boys), the Rattlesnake Gorilla Freaks (seventh-grade girls) and Hellgate Bonitos Senoritas (eighth-grade girls).
All coaches, referees and scorekeepers are volunteers, and children compete at no cost to their parents. The Kiwanis Club, which funds the league with its annual pancake breakfast, estimates that more than 200 members worked more than 3,200 hours to make the 2000 season happen. It is the organization's most labor-intensive community service project.
But the kids take center court. At a game last week between Cates' Sussex-C.S. Porter team and the Hellgate Hotshots, it was evident that in addition to good sportsmanship, the Kiwanis league helps develop sound fundamentals.
"I tell them if you play good defense and make your layups you win in this league," said Doug Cates, Margi's father and the coach of Sussex-C.S. Porter.
Margi played good transition defense; teammate Zhona Joi Tang zipped up and down the court with unmatched speed and an accurate shot. Sussex-C.S. Porter cruised to a 25-point win.
One member of the Sussex-C.S. Porter team was ejected for pushing, and she took a seat on the bench next to coach Cates, who discussed the incident with the player.
"You just try and treat the other team with kindness and respect," said Margi Cates. "And you hope that they do the same for you."
Reporter J.J. Benzak can be reached at 523-5265 or by e-mail at sportsdesk@missoulian.com.
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