Behavior between a coach and other personnel during an public and official event, like a tournament, needs to be cordial and professional; this is one of the cornerstones of ethics in physical education. If one cannot conduct oneself in a professional manner, it is difficult to achieve effective and cooperative communication between individuals. I have had these dilemmas before, as I am not sure how to act around people who are disrespectful of me in physical education contexts. Dealing with aggressive and confrontational situations in public sporting events is part of the job of coaching, and must be addressed in the proper way.
My personal dilemma with confrontations and professionalism in public sporting events stems back to when I was coaching my 7th grade basketball team at a tournament our school was hosting. Being a popular event, the stands were full and we had a large crowd of both local and visiting attendees to the games. However, there were some rule changes I wished to implement for the games, due to the nature of the tournament; I felt they were reasonable, and so I went to the referee in order to discuss them. At the same time, my athletic director needed to talk to me about something, and so he started screaming my name across the court: "Rossi! Rossi! Rossi!"
Without thinking, I turned my head and yelled, "WHAT?!" at the top of my lungs. Admittedly, I had taken a very harsh tone; I was frustrated because I was in the middle of a conversation with the referee and was being shouted at from across the court. However, things became heated; after I yelled back at him, the athletic director walked over to me and told me not to speak to him that way again. His tone was extremely harsh and full of invectives; he told me he had people he knew in the stands, and so he did not want to be yelled at or embarrassed in front of them. He was really getting in my face, sternly lecturing me in a way I felt was disproportionate to the initial response. As a result, I got aggressive right back at him; I asked him, "What are you going to do about it?" and got back in his face as well. I was not really thinking at the time, just responding to outright aggression that I was being faced with. It was an extremely tense situation, and at that point I reacted badly; we got into a shouting match, and even started pushing each other a bit before the referee backed us up and separated us. We walked off to separate ends of the court, and it was a very tense evening for the rest of the night.
I still wonder how I could have handled that situation better; both of us were aggressive, but part of me still feels as though it was his fault for interrupting me in the first place. Either way, I need to determine how best to deal with that kind of situation in the future. Lumpkin et al. (2003) note that moral values must be upheld at all times in sport; one of these is beneficence, acting for the sake of others. Moral behavior within sport has been shown to be steadily degrading, due to the prevalence and tacit endorsement of aggressive behavior shown in most modern sporting events; coaches and players are encouraged to be aggressive in order to display competitiveness (Kaye and Ward, 2010). Aggressive behaviors are often noted as being chiefly caused by the frustrating nature of the game, and of sport in general (Gee and Sullivan, 2006). A relatively high percentage of coaches have been argumentative with sports officials in the past, often due to the presence of spectators, which compel coaches and other officials to be confrontational (Shields et al., 2005). Coach behavior is shown to have dramatic effects on players' aggression, making it important for coach behavior to be positive and professional in public settings (Lieth, 1991; VaezMousavi and Shojaei, 2005). The involvement of the spectator's own aggressive behavior often contributes to a mob mentality that affects even coaches and other players (Omli and LaVoi, 2009).
In this particular situation, I should have dealt with the problem of deviance by controlling my own aggressive behavior. No matter how ill-mannered or abrupt I felt the athletic director was, I should not have allowed it to affect the game. I should have kept things calm in the face of decorum, and discussed the matter of the interruption with him in private following the game. This would have maintained the integrity of the game, and allowed us to maintain a sense of professionalism during a public sporting event. We could then solve the problem with passions calmer in a one-on-one conversation. In order to maintain the possibility of sport instilling positive moral behavior in our students, and not endorsing aggressive behavior by participating in it, I should have handled that situation in a calmer, more reasonable way.
References
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