By Kevin Mills,Staff Writer

For the last month, Sports Done Right has been on tour.

Co-directors J. Duke Albanese and Robert Cobb as well as Karen Brown, the director of the Maine Center for Sport and Coaching, have been visiting various places around the state to talk about the new initiative.

It has been the first chance for many throughout Maine to review the report released in January and ask questions.

“It’s been very positive,” said Brown. “The parents that have come out have been very supportive of making change. We haven’t really had any negative feedback.”

The last scheduled public forum is tonight at Auburn Hall between 4 and 6 p.m. Copies of the report will be available and Albanese, Cobb and Brown will be on hand to discuss the report’s finding. Four area communities have been selected as pilot sites for Sports Done Right. The high schools in Lewiston and Auburn are one site while Poland and Winthrop have also been chosen to help implement the themes unveiled in the report.

“The reaction has been terrific and there have been a lot of great questions,” said Albanese. “There’s been a lot of different roles represented.”

The forums have typically brought out coaches, administrators, parents and athletes. Many have been aware of the report while others have limited knowledge of what the report actually states.

The report reviews seven core principles: Sports and Learning; Leadership, Policy and Organization; Parent and Community; Philosophy, Values and Sportsmanship; Heath and Fitness; Quality of Coaching and Opportunity to Play. Core practices and out-of-bounds behaviors are chronicled in each topic.

“There have been skeptical questions of how are you going to get the public involved,” said Albanese. “We’ve gotten quite a few questions about winning and competition. We try to use the continuum that it’s not winning at all cost.”

The competition question has arisen often. Many have assumed the report is trying to limit the emphasis on winning and competition.

A statistic used in the report states that 72 percent of athletes say they would rather play on a team with a losing record than sit on the bench for a winning team.

Albanese tries to clarify that and put it in the proper context. It’s not a matter of lowering the emphasis on winning or competition but setting a bar as to how far communities can go to achieve. It’s competition without conflict, he says.

“That issue is the one that has come up the most,” said Albanese. “It’s usually been what people have heard from some others that haven’t read the report.”

The federally funded, University of Maine project defines healthy interscholastic sports and makes recommendations for shaping the best possible learning environment. Leadership teams from the 12 pilot sites met Tuesday in Orono. Those pilot schools take Sports Done Right to the community level for discussion. The hope is that communities can endorse the message of Sports Done Right and shape athletic policy and principles.

The report has already drawn national attention. Education Weekly did a feature on the rollout in January. National Public Radio taped the public forum in Augusta two weeks ago and did a story from pilot schools in Maine last week Brown says she’s had as many as 17 other states contact her about Sports Done Right. A college professor at Adelphi University in New York recently ordered copies of Sports Done Right, telling his class it was groundbreaking material.

“That’s representative of the chord this is striking around the country,” said Cobb, dean of UMaine’s College of Education and Human Development.