You grit your teeth in frustration as you crawl out of the pool.  You lost your best race to a person that had smugly been flaunting the fact she was going to beat you.  You were sure you were going to win, but today wasn’t your day.  Your opponent looks over, and with a satisfied smile, smugly says, “Told ya!”  How do you respond?  Do you react with a retort of your own, or biting back disappointment, manage to say, “Good job, you swam a good race.”  This is a decision swimmers often face.  Should you show sportsmanship, or opt for the natural response that comes most easily?

            Sportsmanship.  Often, the very word is misunderstood.  What is the meaning of true sportsmanship? According to the household dictionary, sportsmanship is the ability to show fair play, courtesy, determination, and grace in losing.  These qualities are apparent in good athletes who are great people.  All too often, I look back at past experiences and see ways I could have improved my conduct to better exhibit sportsmanship. From my experience, I have found it takes conscience effort, and requires practice to develop these qualities in my life. However, no matter how hard it may seem at the time, I have never regretted making the right choice, even under difficult circumstances.  Whether struggling with disappointment when loosing, or facing temptation to celebrate without respect for the competition, swimming provides a real life opportunity to develop character through sportsmanship.

Petie Burgdoerfer Essay

Sportsmanship. Also known as the conduct and attitude considered as befitting participants in sports, especially fair play, courtesy, striving spirit, and grace in losing. Sometimes the athletes around you don’t have these characteristics of sportsmanship, and this only makes things harder. Sportsmanship is especially important in swimming, because only one person can win the event. No matter what though, it is important to always play fair, show a great team spirit, and have grace in losing.

Playing fair. That is a big part of sportsmanship. At our age, we luckily don’t see people cheating in sports that often. However, as we grow up, it only gets worse. Ineligible athletes swim when they aren’t supposed to, and now Olympians are getting caught more often for using steroids. Cheating comes from a strong drive to win, but you can still have a strong drive to win, you just have to focus your competitiveness into something fair and productive. A good swimmer can win without cheating, because as we all know, the good guys always win.

S-P-I-R-I-T. My favorite stroke is breastroke. One of the reasons I love breastroke so much is, as you do your pullout under the water, all is calm and quiet. As soon as you take your first stroke, though, you can hear the people in the stands screaming, your coach whistling, and your teammates showing their team spirit. Then, back under water you go, but the spirit has increased your desire to win even more, so you pull faster and stronger, kick more powerfully, and before you know it, you’ve won the race. Only, however, because of the spirit around you.

Last but not least, sportsmanship means grace in losing. Though it is hard, we must try not to be sore losers. Instead, we should congratulate other swimmers. We should wan them to swim there best, so that when we beat them, we know that we just beat their best. A good way I look at it is, follow the Golden Rule. If you won, would you want people treating you poorly? I know I wouldn’t. Treat others how you want to be treated, especially your own teammates. If someone on NAAC doesn’t win, that’s just a loss of points. So be happy for the winners, even if they aren’t you. Most importantly, though, show good sportsmanship! You represent the team, so instead of being selfish and not having grace at losing, play fair, and show a great team spirit! After all, these are the characteristics of a person with good sportsmanship!
           

Sometimes we all have those days where things just do not go right, we are in a bad mood and think the world is out to get us or we are tired of coming to practice or work or school day after day and we can't see the light at the end of the tunnel..if you are having one of those days, read this story below and watch the video at the end, it will remind you of the power of love in each of us and maybe pick up your day and allow you to appreciate all of the gifts you have been given.

Team Hoyt

From Sports Illustrated, By Rick Reilly

I try to be a good father. Give my kids mulligans. Work nights to pay for their text messaging. But compared with Dick Hoyt, I stink. 

Eighty-five times he's pushed his disabled son, Rick, 26.2 miles in Marathons.  Eight times he's not only pushed him 26.2 miles in a wheelchair but also towed him 2.4 miles in a dinghy while swimming and pedaled him 112 miles in a seat on the handlebars--all in the same day.

Dick's also pulled him cross-country skiing, taken him on his back mountain climbing and once hauled him across the U.S. On a bike.  Makes taking your son bowling look a little lame, right?

And what has Rick done for his father? Not much - - except save his life.  This love story began in Winchester , Mass., 43 years ago, when Rick was strangled by the umbilical cord during birth, leaving him brain-damaged and unable to control his limbs.

"He'll be a vegetable the rest of his life;'' Dick says doctors told him and his wife, Judy, when Rick was nine months old. ``Put him in an Institution.''

But the Hoyts weren't buying it. They noticed the way Rick's eyes followed them around the room. When Rick was 11 they took him to the Engineering department at TuftsUniversity and asked if there was anything to help the boy communicate. ``No way,'' Dick was told.  "There's nothing going on in his brain.''

"Tell him a joke,'' Dick countered. They did.  Rick laughed.  Turns out a lot was going on in his brain.

Rigged up with a computer that allowed him to control the cursor by touching a switch with the side of his head, Rick was finally able to communicate.  First words? ``Go Bruins!'' And after a high school classmate was paralyzed in an accident and the school organized a charity run for him, Rick pecked out, `"Dad, I want to do that.''  

Yeah, right.  How was Dick, a self-described "porker'' who never ran more than a mile at a time, going to push his son five miles? Still, he tried.  "Then it was me who was handicapped,'' Dick says. `"I was sore for two weeks.''

That day changed Rick's life. `"Dad,'' he typed, `"when we were running, it felt like I wasn't disabled anymore!''

And that sentence changed Dick's life. He became obsessed with giving Rick that feeling as often as he could.  He got into such hard-belly shape that he and Rick were ready to try the 1979 Boston Marathon.

`"No way,'' Dick was told by a race official. The Hoyts weren't quite a single runner, and they weren't quite a wheelchair competitor. For a few years Dick and Rick just joined the massive field and ran anyway, then they found a way to get into the race officially: In 1983 they ran another marathon so fast they made the qualifying time for Boston the following year.

Then somebody said, ``Hey, Dick, why not a triathlon?''

How's a guy who never learned to swim and hadn't ridden a bike since he was six going to haul his 110-pound kid through a triathlon? Still, Dick tried.

Now they've done 212 triathlons, including four grueling 15-hour Ironmans in Hawaii.  It must be a buzz-kill to be a 25-year-old stud getting passed by an old guy towing a grown man in a dinghy, don't you think?

Hey, Dick, why not see how you'd do on your own? `"No way,'' he says. Dick does it purely for "the awesome feeling'' he gets seeing Rick with a cantaloupe smile as they run, swim and ride together.

This year, at ages 65 and 43, Dick and Rick finished their 24th Boston Marathon, in 5,083rd place out of more than 20,000 starters. Their best time? Two hours, 40 minutes in 1992--only 35 minutes off the world record, which, in case you don't keep track of these things, happens to be held by a guy who was not pushing another man in a wheelchair at the time.

"No question about it,'' Rick types. "My dad is the Father of the Century.''

And Dick got something else out of all this too. Two years ago he had a mild heart attack during a race. Doctors found that one of his arteries was 95% clogged.  "If you hadn't been in such great shape,'' one doctor told him, ``you probably would've died 15 years ago.'' So, in a way, Dick and Rick saved each other's life.

Rick, who has his own apartment (he gets home care) and works in Boston, and Dick, retired from the military and living in Holland, Mass., always find ways to be together. They give speeches around the country and compete in some backbreaking race every weekend, including this Father's Day.

That night, Rick will buy his dad dinner, but the thing he really wants to give him is a gift he can never buy.

"The thing I'd most like,'' Rick types, ``is that my dad sit in the chair and I push him once.''

And the video link is below...

Click For Team Hoyt Video