Recent ratings from the Raccoon River Conference show a troubling trend for Perry adult spectators in the area of sportsmanship in the sport of basketball. At the end of each game, the three officials give a number rating to 4 different groups that they watch during the course of a game. Perry Activities Director Tom Lipovac explains.
“This year, the Raccoon River Conference decided to enact their own sportsmanship ratings and the breakdown is for players, coaches, students and adult spectators. Ballots are provided to the game officials before the contest and the system is explained. We ask them to rate those four areas after the contest. Currently, ratings for players, coaches and students are pretty good. We have concern with our adults who are currently ranked 8th in the conference. We have a significant number of negative ratings and that’s a concern we hope to get cooperation from our community in.”
Game officials rate each school’s players, coaches, students and adults on a scale of 1 to 5 with 1 representing exceptional behavior and 5 conversely unacceptable behavior. Perry adult spectators have received a poor 4 or 5 rating on 16 different occasions through games as of January 13th. Perry Principal Dan Marburger said this was the recent trend that caught the school’s attention.
“I think that our students and coaches are getting great rankings and what we really want is for our adults to get those same great rankings. As an administrative team, what we see our students go through in the stands and then to see how our adults are acting at certain times is discouraging to us as well. You can argue any of these rankings as to if their accurate or not accurate but the whole trend is that our parents are doing a lot less in sportsmanship than our kids are doing.”
As Marburger indicated, the Perry students, players and coaches rating average is a little more than 1, which falls along the lines of outstanding. The Perry adult fans average this year is near 3, which is classified as fair or average with minor improvements needed.
“I always like when we try to be proactive and nobody is making us do anything with these rankings,” added Marburger. “We’re just saying we don’t think their good enough. Our community is much better than this, our kids are much better than this and our school is much better than the rankings that we’re showing. This isn’t anything new. Back in 2008, we sent a letter out to parents during the winter season stating that we thought things were getting a little out of hand and we were able to get a good response out of that. So we think that this is very similar. What we think is even better is when (Activities Director) Mr Lipovac, Superintendent Ubben, myself, and board members talk to people individually and talk to them about our expectations with sportsmanship. Nobody wants to see a parent not be able to see their child play. That’s not the end part of this. We want to take care of the problem before an official ask somebody to leave.”
Currently, the Perry sports winter season is off to an exciting start with both basketball teams sitting at the top of the Raccoon River Conference standings. The Perry School administration and board want to thank the community for this renewed sportsmanship effort and continued support of student athletes at Perry High School.