You may have missed it in the Monitor on Tuesday, but Pembroke Academy has been recognized by the New Hampshire Interscholastic Athletic Association for “outstanding sportsmanship.”
We applaud the academy community – Pembroke, Allenstown, Epsom and Chichester – and especially the student athletes, who went all of last school year without receiving a single game disqualification.
Good sportsmanship is no small accomplishment these days, especially considering the scarcity of role models in college and professional sports. America loves a boastful winner more than a gracious loser. And sportsmanship sometimes looks more like a mindless ritual than a fundamental attribute of competition. Maybe that’s because the very concept of sportsmanship – outside of the end-of-game handshake – is open to interpretation.
Take, for example, American Olympic swimmer Lilly King, who won a gold medal in the 100-meter breaststroke this week but garnered more attention for waving her finger at, and splashing, her Russian opponent, Yulia Efimova. King defended her actions in Brazil by saying she is no fan of Efimova, who served a 16-month suspension for doping. Back home, there was a sense that King’s actions were warranted. The Indianapolis Star even said the finger wag showed “moral strength.”
We get King’s frustration. She, like many of her fellow Olympians, has trained and trained to exhaustion for this moment, and done so within the rules. Efimova hasn’t, and the collective cold shoulder she has received in Rio is certainly understandable.
King is entitled to use her moment in the spotlight in any way she sees fit, because who knows when she will have that big of an audience again. If that means calling out Olympic athletes who rely on performance enhancing drugs, that’s her call. But we can’t help but feel that she undermined herself as an athlete by drawing attention away from her significant accomplishment – a world record on the grandest stage. She also missed an opportunity to show young athletes that it’s possible to both win with grace and stand up for what you believe in.
King said, “I’m not this sweet little girl; that’s not who I am.” On the Olympic stage, that’s completely irrelevant. Whether she likes it or not, to be an Olympian is to represent one’s country and its people. It may not make for very good television or Twitter comments, but King would have been better off speaking out forcefully and intelligently about Olympic injustices or allowing her unadulterated performance to speak for itself. It’s more than a stretch to call a finger wag and splashing a display of “moral strength.”
The late tennis player Arthur Ashe, a great practitioner of class and sportsmanship, once said: “You are never really playing an opponent. You are playing yourself, your own highest standards. And when you reach your limits, that is real joy.”
We hope every New Hampshire athlete competes with their own highest standards in mind, regardless of what they see in stadiums or on television. Recognition from the NHIAA suggests Pembroke Academy student athletes already do. Our hats are off to them.