Meghan Henry lives in Portland.

Youth sports has long been lauded as one way to instill a sense of belonging, responsibility, patience and accountability in young people. Sports, particularly team sports, pushes youth to think beyond the “me” and toward the “we.”

“Sportsmanship is as important as winning,” we say. We should be good humans as we strive to be good athletes. In the last few weeks, I have had the misfortune of witnessing behavior very out of line with these tenets. 

My daughter plays basketball on the eighth grade team of King Middle School in Portland. The team is composed of four (maybe five) players who have played this game before. The other 11 players have never played. Not only is most of the team new, the coaches are also new. They are dedicated King staff filling an unexpected gap, have no experience coaching and limited basketball experience in general.

But the players and coaches are learning, they are showing up, they are trying their best, they are helping each other out on the court — often to understand the basic rules of the game. 

As you may have guessed, the King team is not in the middle of a winning season. We have lost every game, often by a pretty good margin. During most of these games, the other teams exhibit behavior you’d expect. The coaches pull the best players after the first half, they don’t press or try too hard to steal the ball from kids obviously still learning to control the ball, they don’t shoot three-pointer after three-pointer. Basic sportsmanship.

In two of our recent home games, however, we have had teams come in missing that bit of sportsmanship that the other teams exhibited. Windham won the game 73 to our 6. Falmouth won 64 to our 19. During both of these games, the coaches kept their best players in, they stole the ball constantly, they smirked.

Windham celebrated when they hit 67 points (6-7!) while King still had just 6 points. And they continued to score. Their coaches encouraged this. They laughed. They argued with the refs. Falmouth did the same. During the last two minutes of the Falmouth game, the coaches and the players were engaging in “operation 6-7” and had all the players shooting three-pointers for the last few minutes just so they could laugh. The King players kept up their efforts. They did not give up and Falmouth was denied that extra bit of mocking celebration, thank goodness. 

You cannot ignore the underlying context that shines a harsher light on this. Windham and Falmouth are both well-resourced schools. King is not. Our gym has a court that is smaller than regulation, and we do not have bleachers. The King staff line up metal chairs along the wall before each game. When you sit, your toes can touch the sideline.

Many of the King players are in families here (legally) to seek asylum from countries to which they cannot return. The current environment adds a level of stress to all families in our community, and especially those who live in fear of having their parents taken during school drop-offs. For these and other reasons, few King parents can attend the games. 

However, the political climate and socioeconomic disparities are not the responsibility of the student athlete to fully understand. It should be the responsibility of the coaches to help them understand. What are we teaching our youth when we allow players to engage with the world this way?

Each team could have won handily and handled it with grace. They chose not to. These players are watching and learning how to behave on the court. This is not a “participation trophy” argument. The better teams should win and, in an evenly matched game, the better players should play more than the players still learning.

Please do not confuse a plea for sportsmanship with anything other than that. These teams took on the role of every antagonist in an underdog sports movie. During this holiday season, I hope that these coaches and others who have lost sight of the real goal of youth sports reflect on whether they are focusing enough on helping student athletes be good humans as they become — no doubt — exceptional athletes.