CORONAVIRUS (COVID-19) RESOURCE CENTER Read More
Add To Favorites

EDITORIAL: Bill targeting toxic sports culture good, but falls short

Salem News - 5/8/2023

May 8—It has become abundantly clear that the culture surrounding middle- and high-school sports have to change.

A disturbing number of incidents have proven that to be true over the past few years: Ongoing racist and homophobic hazing on the Danvers boys hockey team, hazing on the Haverhill football team that led to canceling a season and coaches being arrested, and the use of antisemitic slurs in the Duxbury football program. School officials in Wayland are investigating a report last week of a racist remark made during a middle-school track meet.

"It is clear that we need to change the culture of sports teams and transform them into safe, supportive environments that help student athletes build positive relationships and social-emotional skills," Massachusetts Senate Majority Leader Cynthia Creem told a legislative panel last week.

That's a gentler way of saying we need to clean up this mess. Subjecting middle- and high-school athletes to this toxic stew is educational malpractice and does nothing to help them grow into physically and mentally healthy adults. Rather, the longer adults stand aside and watch, the more likely the poisonous practices are to be handed down from class to class and generation to generation.

School sports have long been celebrated for their ability to impart lasting values on their participants, values that transcend the games being played. The question now is what values we want to celebrate.

We must stop looking into the past with rose-colored glasses. The world has changed, and youth sports must change with it. Hazing, bullying and "locker room talk" have done nothing to turn impressionable boys into well-adjusted men. Nothing. It has to stop.

To do so, the nonprofit End Abusive Coaching Campaign says, schools must provide "systemic change to public school sports teams that emphasizes the needs of 21st century children and abandons a sports team model meant for 19th century students."

And let's be clear. The pressure needs to be on the adults — parents and coaches — to fix the problem. They, especially coaches, are the ones holding all the power. They can be slow to change, and school administrators can be slow to force them to change.

"While sports can be a tremendous source of joy for many, the very structure of the sports team institutionalizes a power imbalance between authoritative coaches and voiceless students that invites abuse," said Mitch Lyons, founder of GetPsychedSports.org and the Social Emotional Learning Alliance for Massachusetts.

Lyons was testifying on Beacon Hill in support of a bill filed by Creem and state Rep. Kay Hahn, a fellow Needham Democrat, that would offer school systems more training on the issue.

The bill would, among other things, amend the state's Anti-Bullying Law by adding a section that requires the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to publish new guidelines for the implementation of a "social emotional learning curriculum" for school athletics programs.

It's a good proposal, and would mesh well with efforts undertaken by Attorney General Andrea Campbell and many school districts.

It falls short, however, in not making such training mandatory.

"We're not trying to put a mandate on schools," Creem said. "This bill will help our collective vision of school athletics as an institution that helps young people learn new life skills, develop strong values and transcend cultural divides."

Those are changes every responsible adult can get behind.

___

(c)2023 The Salem News (Beverly, Mass.)

Visit The Salem News (Beverly, Mass.) at www.salemnews.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.