The five service academies are taking a tangible approach to educating their students, student-athletes and fans about sportsmanship.

The U.S. Air Force Academy, U.S. Coast Guard Academy, U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, U.S. Military Academy and U.S. Naval Academy have developed a citation system that could literally hold the responsibility for good behavior over people’s heads.

Called the Superintendent’s Distin­guished Citation for Sportsmanship, the initiative is a unified effort to promote respect for student-athletes, coaches and officials in intercollegiate athletics. The citations will have the seals of each academy, a place for each superintendent to sign above their seal, and will be awarded — if warranted — each spring and mounted in a prominent place on campus.

“Right or wrong, as a federal service academy, we tend to be held to a higher standard by the public. We wanted to try to live up to that standard by addressing potential concerns before they begin,” said Sue Petersen Lubow, athletics director at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy and chair of a representative committee overseeing the effort.

The award establishes several criteria in sportsmanship education, game management and campus policy. Each institution also has established a review panel accountable for monitoring its athletics contests. Every spring, those groups will determine if the institution has met the criteria and has maintained an appropriate game environment.

“Each institution judges itself upon whether it has met the standards,” Petersen Lubow said. “And a premium will be placed on what you did to address the concerns. None of us is perfect, so it is unlikely that there won’t be some incident or complaint throughout the year. But the idea is not to turn your back. If we hear someone in the stands say something offensive, what did we do about it? We have to document it and write about what we did to correct the problem.”

Those documents will be on file with each institution’s review committee to not only accumulate best practices, but also serve as a reference for future game management personnel.
“We feel this is something tangible, and our midshipmen/cadets are apprised of this,” Petersen Lubow said. “We already have a place in our facility designated for the citation — and if we don’t get it, our students will know it.”

Petersen Lubow said the committee at each institution will make sure the effort is worthwhile and not just an arbitrary award.

“If you don’t deserve it, you don’t get it,” she said. “I’m hoping that the kid in the stands who can’t keep his mouth shut will realize now that he’s hurting the whole institution when he behaves poorly. Suddenly those actions won’t be so funny anymore.”

Hoosier celebration follows bouncing ball

A Hoosier Basketball Celebration October 28 set a Guinness World Record when 3,054 people dribbled basketballs from the middle of downtown Indianapolis to Conseco Fieldhouse, home of the NBA Indiana Pacers. The crowd eclipsed the old record of 1,111 dribblers by a school in Australia.

 To count toward the record, people had to dribble the ball for five minutes — if they lost their dribble, they were to resume as quickly as possible. Though thousands of people attended the Hoosier Celebration to gear up for the NBA season, many were eliminated from the record when they stopped to take pictures.

The NCAA supported the event along with the NBA, WNBA, USA Basketball and the National Federation of State High School Associations.

“Growing up and playing basketball in Indiana, I know what the game means to all of us,” said Pacers President of Basketball Operations Larry Bird.