Just Another Summer Monday – Not Quite

Source:Pixabay/Gellinger CC0 Public Domain

Today is a Summer Monday, let there be no doubt about that. For most teachers in my district, it is not just another Summer Monday; today is the last Monday of Summer Break. Next Monday we begin our Teacher Workdays and the following Monday the students come back to school.

The week ahead will be a week of getting all those last minute things done around the house and yard, visiting doctors and dentists, back to school shopping, and wishing for one more week of summer.

This year this week will also see the wrap up of the 2016 Rio Olympics. The Games had come off much better than expected, or so it seemed, until Sunday morning when Ryan Lochte and three other members of the USA Swim Team were robbed at gunpoint by someone posing as, or perhaps who really was, a Rio police officer. There had been some concern expressed about this sort of thing happening to athletes or visitors during the games since robberies of this type are not rare in Rio, but this is the first report I’ve heard of athletes being robbed on the streets of Rio since the games began. Let us hope it is the last.

Trash talking also seems to have become a big part of the Olympics. To judge by the way it’s been reported, trash talking has become a secondary sport among female athletes, many of them from the US. From Lilly King to Hope Solo to Jenny Simpson, it seems like talking bad about your opponent has come to replace beating them in the pool, on the pitch, or on the track. I don’t believe this is the type of example we want to hold up to our children as something to emulate. I’d rather see our youth react more the way Michael Phelps did. He did not retaliate to his opponent's taunting in the ready room. He defeated his opponent in the pool in devastating fashion. Michael’s show-don’t-tell style of shutting his opponents up is much more admirable.

Also disappointing to me is the way many of the track athletes are insulting and putting down those that came before them. These modern athletes brag about how they outdid their predecessors while ignoring the fact that today’s track athletes are as much a product of science and sports medicine as they are of hard work and talent. If the record setters of Olympics past had access to the tools available to today’s athletes, they would probably put these mouthy youngsters to shame.

The Olympics should not just be an event for athletes who are exceptionally good at their sport, it should also be an event for athletes who are exceptionally good sports. Good sportsmanship seems to be in dwindling supply around the world, but the Olympics should be a time when good sportsmanship takes center stage.

On this not-quite-just-another-Summer-Monday, as middle and high schools around the country are launching their athletic programs for another school year, I hope that good sportsmanship will be the emphasis for the players, coaches, parents, and fans. Winning is always more fun than losing, but if you act like a jerk on your way to winning all people will remember about you is that you were a jerk.

As always, I remain,

The Exhausted Educator