skip navigation

Would Your Youth Athlete Agree to This Code of Conduct?

By Janis B Meredith, JBM Thinks, 10/23/18, 12:00PM PDT

Share

I’d love to suggest that coaches and parents use these guidelines to come up with a code of conduct for your team. Post them on the fridge and in the locker room. Let kids know what is expected of them.

What should the code of conduct be for athletes? A few months ago, when Serena Williams lost her cool and got into it with the chair umpire during the U.S. Open, she provoked a lot of discussion about how athletes should behave as they play sports. Some felt that her outburst was understandable; others felt that she went too far.

Which got me thinking. What standard are coaches and parents holding young athletes to these days? What should the expectations of behavior be for kids playing sports? High emotions are normal in youth sports and squashing them all together should not be the objective in setting a code of conduct. But kids need to understand how to deal with those emotions by learning how to control and channel them.