There are still a lot of officials to respect, opponents to honor and hands to shake before reaching the record of five straight, but last week Kearsarge Regional High School won its third consecutive Division III Sportsmanship Award from the New Hampshire Interscholastic Athletic Association.
Ever since the 1991-92 school year, the NHIAA has given a sportsmanship award to one school in each division, although there have been a few years with some divisional co-winners. Plenty of local schools have been honored – Concord High has won it five times, the most recent in 2013-14. Pittsfield (2015-16), Coe-Brown (2013-14), Inter-Lakes (2013-14), Merrimack Valley (2012-13), Belmont and Gilford (2012-2013 D-III co-winners) have all been honored with the award in the last five years alone.
And it’s Coe-Brown that holds the record for most consecutive Sportsmanship Awards, claiming five in a row from 2005-10.
“So many schools do such a good job and it’s such a fine line in the scoring that you have to have a little luck involved,” Kearsarge Athletic Director Scott Fitzgerald said.
After winning three straight awards, however, it’s clear that luck is not the only factor here. The award is based on the actions of the student-athletes and coaches on every team, as well as the environment at home games – fan behavior and administrative responses to inappropriate behavior. The Cougars have obviously been doing the right thing in all those areas, and it starts at the top with Fitzgerald and Rob Bennett, the Kearsarge principal who was also a fixture as a coach at the North Sutton school for years.
“I think it’s a pretty subtle message that gets passed on throughout all our programs. Each team has a code of conduct and a set of expectations and those differ from program to program, but that kind of comes from the top down from Scott,” said Zach Matthews, Kearsarge’s football and boys’ lacrosse head coach. “The thinking is that we all have a set of firm expectations that is shared with the student-athletes and the parents ahead of time so everybody is on the same page at the beginning of the season.”
Fitzgerald is quick to give credit to his predecessor, Marty Brown, who was the AD at Kearsarge for 28 years, saying, “what Marty built here was amazing and I just had to pick up the baton and run with it.
“And to have a guy like Rob Bennett, who I think is one of the best coaches we’ve ever had here, adds another layer of support and perspective,” Fitzgerald added. “He lived it. He went through it in multiple sports, so he understands this at a deep level and he’s been tremendous.”
There’s also another tremendous layer of this accomplishment – while Kearsarge has been winning Sportsmanship Awards it has also been piling up championships. During the last three years, the Cougars have won 11 titles and had eight runner-up teams. All 11 of the championships and five of the runner-ups have come in the last two years.
The 2016-17 title-winning teams were boys’ basketball, girls’ lacrosse, boys’ and girls’ Alpine skiing and boys’ and girls’ Nordic skiing; and the 2016-17 runner-ups were boys’ lacrosse and boys’ cross country. The 2015-16 champs were boys’ cross country, boys’ outdoor track, girls’ Nordic skiing and boys’ and girls’ Alpine skiing. The 2015-16 runner-ups were boys’ basketball, girls’ lacrosse and bass fishing. And the 2014-15 runner-ups were boys’ and girls’ Nordic skiing and boys’ outdoor track.
To put that in perspective, Coe-Brown’s excellent athletic programs had three champions and five runner-ups during their five-year run of Sportsmanship Awards.
“To do it when we’ve also been competitive just speaks volumes about the student-athletes and the coaches and the commitment they’ve made to it,” Fitzgerald said. “Because sometimes you’ll see the voting and it will be the inverse of the standings. So to be able to compete at a high level and compete the right way, it’s just been great to watch.”
“To have a bunch of teams winning championships and be winning sportsmanship awards, I think that’s the piece I’m most proud of,” Matthews said. “We’re doing it the right way. We’re winning, but we’re winning with our kids carrying themselves the right way and the success on the field reinforces in that.”
The inverse is also true – doing things the right way, with sportsmanship coming first, has led to winning.
“We have to keep a clear head to be able to execute plays or run certain things, so we couldn’t get wrapped up in all the other stuff, people trying to say stuff to us, or the refs making a bad call,” said Justin Norris, who was part of two boys’ Alpine titles, a boys’ lacrosse runner-up and rushed for 3,752 yards for the football team before graduating this spring. “As long as we kept to our game and did what we knew how to do, we played well.”
“I think that a lot of times coaches, parents, everybody will look at sportsmanship and winning as two separate things, but I think they’re one and the same,” Matthews said. “I think it comes back to holding yourself to a higher standard and having a firm set of expectations and I think if you have those expectations and standards, the results typically follow. Same thing on the other end. If you don’t have high expectations and it’s kind of anything goes, the product on the field reflects that.”
(Tim O’Sullivan can be reached at 369-3341, tosullivan@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @timosullivan20)