Bob Leddy
The Providence Journal
June 19, 2006

The Fourth World Scholar-Athlete Games, which combine sports and cultural activities for teenagers, are scheduled for June 24 through July 2 at the University of Rhode Island, in Kingston.

This event is decidedly not a forum for out-of-control coaches and over-zealous parents. Scholar-Athlete Games are designed to foster, in the words of its mission statement, “understanding and friendship among world athletes.”

What a refreshing concept. And just in time, too.

Because it seems that so many youth-based activities these days are heavily freighted. Even the basic spelling bee—with its origins in the one-room school-house – is televised nationally, with cameras zooming in on nonplussed children. Ditto the Little League World Series, which comes complete with “color commentators.”

Yet down at URI, kids from the 50 states and 160 countries will be enjoying contests – from baseball to rugby, from soccer and track to tennis and chess – in a relaxed atmosphere. (Note that I said “enjoying” and “relaxed.”) And those not on the playing fields will be pursing any number of cultural interests, including photography, writing, dance, and culinary arts.

The World Scholar-Athlete Games promote and achieve global propinquity.

As a Journal sports writer I covered the 1997 Games (also held on the Kingston campus, as well as in Newport), and I can unequivocally state that it was one of the best assignments I ever received. It was an educational experience to interview people from China, New Zealand, Ireland, Kenya, and other points on the world map. I was also happy to see how absent the Games were of pressure, one-upmanship, and cynicism. Never did I hear someone yell from the sidelines, “Make ‘em pay the price!” (as bellicose an exhortation as I can imagine, and one that I’ve actually heard while covering youth-league games).

Rather, the universal language of cooperation through sports and culture is what is spoken at the Scholar-Athlete Games.

This was certainly on the mind of Dan Doyle, author and erstwhile college-basketball coach, who in 1986 founded the International Institute of Sport, based at URI. That was the genesis, seven years later, of the first World Scholar-Athlete Games, and the Center for Sports Parenting – all promoting the idea that competition and sportsmanship are not mutually exclusive.

The Olympic ideal lies behind the Scholar-Athlete Games, but minus the baggage. While holistic in nature, the Olympics seem to be forever mired in politics and internecine bickering. Too, the inclusion of professional athletes in Olympic events fairly mocks the “purity of amateurism” on which the Olympics were founded – not to mention the modern specter of performance-enhancing steroids.

Any message that promotes sportsmanship is particularly needed today. A move by the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference to punish high-school football coaches who “roll up” the score on a weaker opponent has shared recent headlines with fears of violence and betting scandals at the World Cup soccer matches.

Meanwhile, the growing priority of National Hockey League games seems to be the on-ice fistfights. A brush-back pitch in baseball may preceded a dugout-clearing rhubarb. Punches and elbows are thrown under the backboards at basketball games. Football players to celebration romps over tackled opponents.

And, on the local playing fields, parents have been known to assault game officials, along with shouting “Make ‘em pay the price!” at 12-year-olds.

As I’ve noted in past Journal commentaries (and as Journal sports writer Carolyn Thornton is addressing in her fine series on sports parents), competition is a necessary and healthy component of any game. But keeping everything in perspective is equally vital – maybe the most important aspect of sports on the youth level.

The World Scholar-Athlete games represent just such a perspective, and the kids who are involved revel in it. The event is held here for a week only, but its message must be listened to, then perpetuated. Otherwise, all of us will “pay the price” with a generation willing to beat the competition at any cost.