Bad Kids or Bad Coaching?

When your son or daughter swings a bat, shoots a basket, kicks a ball, or slaps a hockey puck down the ice, are they becoming a better moral being? Maybe not.

In fact, Darren Treasure says that they could be learning entirely the wrong lesson—one that could have lifelong repercussions. Treasure is an ASU professor of exercise science who specializes in sport psychology.

Treasure claims that one of the keys to moral development in sports is coaching. More specifically, it is whether a coach establishes a motivational climate that defines success in mastery or performance oriented ways. Your child’s coach might be one of many who are not up to par.

Coaching can make a big difference where your child’s morals are concerned. Bad coaching emphasizes winning as the sole source of success. Treasure calls this performance-oriented coaching. It can promote dishonesty and selfishness.

“If winning is everything, an athlete will do anything to win,” Treasure says.

Good coaching emphasizes personal improvement and task mastery. Such mastery-oriented coaching can make sports and athletics one of the most effective moral tutors available to parents.

Treasure’s concern prompted a series of studies. The results of one are soon to be published in the Psychology of Sport and Exercise. The study involved 279 male soccer players, aged 12-14. The boys played in an international youth soccer tournament in Norway.

Treasure had each player complete a questionnaire. He wanted to know how each boy perceived the motivational climate of their team, ideas of sportspersonship, and social-moral reasoning and behavior. The scientist used statistical analysis to correlate the boys’ answers.

Treasure found a definite link between mastery oriented coaching, good sportspersonship, and a well-developed set of morals. Players who perceived the climate as mastery-oriented preferred a mature moral motive for action on the field. They wanted to do what is fair or right, and were conscious of the needs of others. They were less likely to report an intention to intimidate an opponent, fake an injury, or risk injuring an opponent. They also regarded their opponents primarily as co-creators of an experience, and competition as a process of striving with, not against, others.

By contrast, Treasure’s analysis also revealed that players who perceived a predominantly performance-oriented climate were those most likely to report hostility. They engaged in illegitimate and unjust behavior toward other players. They employed egocentric moral reasoning when faced with social-moral dilemmas. They also suppressed empathy to pursue victory by any means necessary.

Treasure says the findings demand that parents and communities pay attention to the way youth athletics are coached, played, and watched.

The ASU researcher is working with the Arizona Interscholastic Association to implement a program he calls “Pursuing Victory with Honor.” The program is funded by the Arizona Department of Health Services. It provides high school coaches and administrators with skills and strategies to develop sportspersonship in Arizona high schools.—Matthew Shindell