Different Perspectives

As you may recall, we're collecting anonymous responses to address possible ways that we might work together to improve junior tennis. With respect to sportsmanship, we received very interesting comments that can be summarized as follows:

• PLAYER'S Perspective: "Players should be more honest and have better attitudes."
• PARENT'S Perspective: "Referees should not put up with bad behavior on the court."
• PRO'S Perspective: "Officials must penalize bad behavior."

HIGH-TECH TENNIS Perspective: Winning the Sportsmanship Award at a junior tennis tournament seems so much more important in the long run than winning the tournament itself. We think the good person has so much more to offer the world than the good tennis player. If it were up to us (which is absolutely is not), we'd like to see the Sportsmanship Award included at each and every tournament. Further, we were encouraged when we recently read about a league that requires players to rate their opponent's sportsmanship after each match. What a novel concept!

We encourage every player prior to the beginning of the tournament to do their best to win the Sportsmanship Award. This generates some interesting responses, ranging from "I'll try my best," to "That'll never happen!"

Obviously, our opinion is just that and others have a very different take on this. Consider the player who gave this response: "Why would I want to waste my time on that? I'm going to win the tournament!" And don't even get me started on Andre Agassi's father smashing and destroying Andre's Sportsmanship Trophy...Talk about destroying his spirit.

So what do YOU think about this topic? We are very interested in initiating a dialog and hopefully learning from each other. Remember that THE VERY LAST THING we want to do is generate any controversy whatsoever. Please share your thoughts but do not include any names or your post will be promptly deleted.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT, we hope you enjoy this topic, and we can't wait to see YOU!!! Cheers! :)