Saint David’s athletes follow the ROOTS acronym in honoring the game.
of the game, they can play hard without stress, learn and
improve, and experience participating in an activity they
enjoy. Winning on the scoreboard will take care of itself
as the result of mastery of athletic skills through effort,
learning, and bouncing back from mistakes. If our boys are
able to strive to achieve these goals, then they will merit the
title of winners.
Filling Emotional Tanks 3
Just like a fine sports car needs a full tank of fuel to keep
it running, we recognize the importance of keeping our
boys’ emotional tanks filled. In order to help our student-
in filling their tanks. We are also on guard to make sure
that we don’t empty our students’ emotional tanks by being
sarcastic or unfairly criticizing them.
Honoring the Game 4
Sportsmanship may seem like an out-of-date concept
today when professional athletes and coaches act in ways
we would not want our children to imitate. A week does
not go by without one of our sports heroes doing something
that makes our job as coaches and parents that much harder.
In order to reverse this trend of poor sportsmanship in
our sports culture, we talk to the boys about the worth of
“By asking the boys to take a closer look at the word (ROOTS) and
absorb the significance of each letter, they learn to respect the Rules,
Opponents, Officials, Teammates, and Self.”
athletes perform their best, we practice on giving honest and
specific praise on a daily basis. (i.e. “I like the way you’ve
been shooting the ball, you’ve shown good form on your
follow-through,” as opposed to saying, “nice shot or great
pass, Jimmy.”) By giving specific and sincere compliments,
we keep our boys’ emotional tanks filled and validate their
accomplishments in a positive way.
Some other ways we like to fill our players’ emotional
tanks are by listening to suggestions they might have about
practice or games, and having their teammates participate
28 • Saint David’s Magazine
“Honoring the Game.” In order to take sportsmanship to
the next level, we use the acronym ROOTS. By asking the
boys to take a closer look at the word (ROOTS) and absorb
the significance of each letter, they learn to respect the Rules,
Opponents, Officials, Teammates and Self. Honoring the
Game gets to the ROOTS of the matter of positive play.
• Rules: We don’t bend the rules to win. We respect the
letter and spirit of the rules.
• Opponents: A worthy opponent is a gift that forces us