Sportsmanship’s worst and best

The two heads of sportsmanship were on the front page of Friday’s paper.

A mini-melee following the Palmer-Wasilla boys basketball game Tuesday night put a black eye on local high school sports.

Athletes will occasionally scuffle. Coaches then mete out the necessary punishment and repeat the mantra of how mental discipline, or the lack of, wins or loses games. That’s realm of the sports section.

So when one player, obviously not thinking, pushed another to the floor of the court, tempers naturally flared, but administrators from both schools quickly brought the unfortunate incident under control.

Until a misguided parent got in the action and came out of the stands and onto the court in front of hundreds of people who came to watch a game. And a pretty good game at that — a one-point difference.

Some athletes and fans would have gone home happy and some disappointed. That’s life in sports.

The man should have been among those going home with one emotion or the other. But he chose to be something else, and that decision is what made the melee a front page story.

He represents the parents we’ve all read about who fight behind the stands at Little League games. He’s the mother who calls the coach at home, screeching for more playing time for her child.

He represents embarrassed children all over the nation.

He shouldn’t be sold a ticket to anymore games for the remainder of this school year.

To his credit, he called appropriate administrators and apologized.

It would have been much better if an apology wasn’t necessary.

Go Moose

The other side of sportsmanship came Thursday night when the underdog Palmer High School hockey team beat Anchorage’s West High. They not only beat the Eagles, but handed them a 4-0 shutout.

According to those in the know, Palmer won the game playing disciplined, team-first hockey with few penalty minutes. Perhaps those in the know are prejudiced, but they say the few scraps were instigated by the Eagles.

If all that is true, then the Moose coaching staff deserves a lot of credit.

One of the primary reasons parents put their children in the hands of coaches is they expect their children to learn what it’s like to work as a team — win or lose. That requires selflessness. Parents also want their children to learn discipline. When sports is behind them, they can carry some of those lessons into life. That’s the ideal behind team sports.

Even though the Moose didn’t make it to the championship game, the program has made great strides from a more dismal past when wins were rare. The Moose deserve a pat on the back for putting each other ahead of individual goals and stats.

And congratulations to their exuberant, but well-behaved, hometown fans.