Going too far on the playing field

When halftime came for senior Erica Nowak in a club lacrosse game two years ago, her coach was mad. Two of their starting players had been injured. The refs didn't seem to be calling a fair game. Their team was down 3-1. And so, Nowak recalls, instead of telling the girls to keep their heads up, the coach pulled them into a huddle and said what he really thought was going to help them win the game.

"If you're going to go for a check, don't go for the stick," he told the dispirited girls.

To Nowak and her teammates, the coach's meaning was clear. In the second half, a reinvigorated and more aggressive team took their coach's advice to heart and tried to win the game however they could—and they did, 7-5. Following her coach's advice, Nowak swung at her opponent's head with a check so hard that she knocked the girl out, an action recognized as violent enough to be penalized with a red card.

More than six million high school students nationwide participate in school sports annually, and two million of them sustain some injury, according to the Journal of Athletic Training. Whether it is a scraped knee, sprained ankle or, in the case of Nowak's opponent, a blow to the head, the sports field is the stage for a large number of athletic injuries and increasingly violent sports.

Getting angry

In the world of competitive high school sports, playing at the varsity level means playing aggressively. A player has to go for the ball, the block, the shot, the hit or the rebound tenaciously. The problem is that more athletes are playing with aggression, which is defined by the National Youth Violence Prevention Center web site as any act intended to do harm.

In the realm of contact sports, players get knocked around. Body checks are legal in hockey and boys' lacrosse. Players use slide tackles to win the ball in soccer. Hits and tackles are part of the game in football. The question then becomes whether a player will stop where the rules require they do.

The department of Kinesiology and Physical Education at Cal State L.A. teaches an entire unit on "aggression and violence in sport," focusing on the theories behind what makes athletes tick. One of these instigators is called the frustration-aggression hypothesis.

The idea behind this theory is that some sort of stimulus triggers aggression on the field, whether it is faulty calls by officials, fouls by other players or taunting from fans.

Recently, it has been hypothesized that players test a "threshold of tolerance" on the field, continually blurring the line between what is and isn't legitimate in the world of contact sports, causing more volatility and injuries on the field.

Getting even

As Blair varsity girls' soccer and boys' lacrosse coach Robert Gibb points out, "Playing within the rules of any contact sport, there can be a good amount of physical contact. It is a part of the game when done correctly." When athletes manipulate the rules of the game to injure another player, then an already physical game becomes too physical.

Blair social studies teacher Lansing Freeman recalls a men's league soccer game where he was roughly knocked down by another player, resulting in a cut near the corner of his eye. When he looked to the player for an apology, he didn't get one; he got laughed at instead.

So the next time the player had the ball, Freeman says, he went in for a slide tackle so forceful that he kicked the ball "about 60 yards" and "took the guy down." The fall left the player with bruises and scrapes covering his face.

Freeman says that he worked within the rules by making contact with the ball first, but admits that he was not without hidden intentions. "I knew what I was doing. I wanted to knock him down, to take him down for what he did to me," Freeman says.

As a coach and athlete, Gibb has encountered a number of overly aggressive incidents on the field. "I've seen legs broken because of cheap shots. I've listened to the sound of legs breaking. I've seen goal keepers knocked unconscious," he says.

Sometimes players disregard the rules of the game all together. An angry Sherwood player kicked senior Chris Wilhelm, goalie for Blair's varsity boys' soccer team, in the mouth during a game last year after he stopped the forward's attempt on goal. The kick was so forceful that it knocked one of Wilhelm's teeth out of place, causing a deep cut in his cheek. Even with blood running down Wilhelm's face, the player who injured him was not carded. According to Wilhelm, the play was so blatantly illegal that when the player wasn't penalized, the whole team reacted. "After he kicked me, he just kept standing over me, looking down on me and kind of smirking. The whole bench went crazy because we wanted him to get more of a punishment than he did. With a kick like that, he should have," Wilhelm explains.

According to Blair Athletic Director Dale Miller, "There's a line between trying to hurt the person and trying to intimidate them." It is a line that many student-athletes fail to see, and one that the County is trying to make more visible.

Safety first

In an effort to keep Montgomery County's 22,000 athletes safe on the field and on the court, the County Athletics Department has instituted a "major sportsmanship program" to reward fair play, according to Dr. William G. Beattie, Coordinator of Athletics for Montgomery County.

The program, which is entering its third year, requires athletic directors and game referees from each County high school and each high school contest, respectively, to fill out forms concerning the fairness of play on the field and the level of hospitality in the stands. It also requires that the Sportsmanship Code be read before each home contest to remind players and fans to be good sports on and off the field. It is a requirement that is rarely met at Blair's home athletic events.

Beattie thinks the program is a success. "In a competition, when the whistle blows, you're competing hard. The lacrosse field, soccer field, basketball court, wrestling mat—it doesn't matter where you play; you're trying to win," says Beattie. "But our Sportsmanship Program adds to the idea that maybe winning isn't everything."
Students like Nowak and Wilhelm believe that aggression has become a part of the game, and that to be a successful athlete today a player must know how to fight, and fight back. Miller agrees. "I think the general public likes sports involving aggression," he says. "Fights bring in the crowds."

Gibb, however, believes that the game should be about the game and not about trying to calculate overly aggressive moves to create an advantage. "You can make a good block and win the ball, and that's being aggressive. But it's when you come in on someone from behind or go behind the refs back to gain an advantage, then that's a cheap shot," he says. "To me, a cheap shot is cowardly."