Saying Goodbye to the Kentucky Handshake

So Kentucky is considering eliminating the post-game handshake because too many incidents were arising from encouraging good sportsmanship. Yeah, that will improve things. They’re also talking about “monitoring” the handshake. You mean the coaches aren’t involved in the first place?

Good sportsmanship is the responsibility of the coach. “Win with class, lose with class,” is our mantra, and we preach it from Day 1. You can be upset at the outcome, the other coach, the other players, the spectators (parents); none of that matters. What matters is your behavior, your reaction. That is what you control.

The coach, however, can, no, must, enforce, or reinforce, the desired behavior. Kids are out for a sport because they want to play, but we must remember they are still kids, no matter how gifted an athlete. Inappropriate behavior during or after a game? Then they don’t play, the next game, the next week, the rest of the season, whatever it takes to get that message across to the rest of the team. I pretty much guarantee it will take just one message (and if it’s to the best player on the team, so be it) with that kind of consequence and it’s “problem solved.”

Of course, while I can’t control the other team, the other program, I can prepare my kids for those who don’t live up to our standards. More than once I’ve reminded my teams before the handshake line gets going that, “We win with class, we lose with class.” They know what’s expected. More than once I’ve had opposing players try to “punish” me or one of my players with a hard hand-slap. Who’s the adult? The coach, and it’s the coach’s job to model the expected behavior.

If Kentucky has a problem, then it’s a problem with their coaches and their definition of sportsmanship. Schools that tolerate that kind of “leadership” from their coaches, no matter how many wins or losses (s)he generates, are complicit in that failure. One team wins and one team loses hard-fought competition. Sometimes the outcomes are unfair. You may have noticed that life, too, is often unfair. My responsibility as a coach is to make sure my girls know it’s not the outcome, it’s the process, and that includes, above all, “winning with class or losing with class.”

Addendum: If the other team is bent on mayhem, that is undeniably a different problem. If the coaches of the other team don’t have control over their players, that’s its own challenge. Sports that are predicated on violence and physical intimidation, where those attributes are encouraged and rewarded with helmet stickers (stay tuned), high fives, or pats on the back, are clearly going to be harder to monitor. Softball is obviously less of a contact sport than many others, so maybe it’s easier to manage. Still, you’ll have a hard time convincing me that a competent coach (or coaching staff) can’t recognize when a player is out of control or on the verge of going over the line. I once had to sit one of the most gifted softball athletes I’ve ever seen because she had no self-restraint. I’d like to say it was a lesson well-learned, but I fear those issues are still with her – she didn’t last the season.