Character Development Through Sports

America’s greatest football coach of all time, Vince Lombardi, once said “football is like life – it requires perseverance, self-denial, hard work, sacrifice, dedication and respect for authority”. There is so much more to youth sports than just learning sport skills. It provides the opportunity to instill and develop character and value into the youth athletes and these can be translated into their everyday life. When character development is considered and included into training programmes, youth coaches can be effectively nurturing good people instead of just good athletes.

Implications for poor character development in sports

• Unsportsmanlike behaviour such as lack of respect to opponents, cheating, etc.

• Win at all cost mentality

• Poor values translated into everyday life

Tips for character development through sports

• Provide coaches the opportunity to learn and share ideas about how to build skills, virtues, and generosity in an athletic context

• Build skills like problem solving by getting them to analyse their own problems and look for improvement or empathy and communication skills that are essential for knowing what is happening around their teammates and coordinating activities.

• Promote essential virtues like perseverance through adversity as well as sportsmanship which emcompasses respect to opponents, fairplay, integrity, etc.

• Coaches themselves should strive to be a positive role model and lead by example. This include exemplary behaviour like being punctual, etc.

• Coach can strive create a team culture that nurtures positive teammate behavior across the entire program. This can be done by highlighting the expected behaviours to youth athletes. One example would be to introduce the idea of CREDIT which is an acronym for cooperative, respectful, enthusiastic, disciplined, invested and trustworthy.

Further readings Developing good teammates Video of Geno Auriemma On Body Language And The Type Of Players He Recruits Confidence Building 4 ways to use athletics to promote SEL and character development Anti-doping information and course