Sportsmanship gone wild

This was posted on YouTube by SWFLHoops and is getting some national play as an example of the breakdown of sportsmanship and what it leads to.

Ref Gets Tossed by Desoto player

The game ended in forfeit after the player from Desoto High School in Arcadia, FL attacked the referee after being issued a technical foul and was ejected from the game. The player has been banned from all extracurricular school activites according to the coach, suspended till January 10th as of now, and a police report has been filed. However, the official involved chose not to press charges at this time.

Please do not let the actions of one teenager generalize the future potential actions of other individuals. This individual obviously made a bad decision. However, there has not been any other on the court incidents by other team members that we have knowledge of, and this player just transferred into the school this season. Therefore please do not unfairly associate his actions with the other players on the team. We posted the video because it is newsworthy but not with the intentions of it branding a team, coaches, school, country or area in the same light. We feel that the school, coaches, and anyone involved handled this very well, as it could have escalated even further but did not.

I was happy to see that the officials declared the contest a forfeit. This is an underutilized tool because when it is used the onus is often turned back on the officials rather than on the behavior that precipitated the forfeit. Cries of "your punishing the other kids" rain down when in reality it seems as if the officials who choose this tool are using the last option available to provide a safe environment for everyone, officials included.

When all else fails and players still display no intention of controlling their behavior then the environment is polluted so much that in reality nobody is safe and all the participants need to take a step back and re-examine what they are doing and why they are out there on the court in the first place. A healthy dose of perspective is needed. A little soul-searching. Situations like this do not happen by accident.