‘Done Right’ questions pressed in Rockland

ROCKLAND – Based on the local scuttlebutt, it didn’t surprise the members of Rockland’s Sports Done Right leadership panel that the issues of competition and the cutting of athletes came up during Thursday’s community meeting.

After all, that’s what the community and the kids in the high school have been wondering about – and have been somewhat worried about.

But at least one member of the audience in Rockland High School’s auditorium headed home to reassure her daughter that Sports Done Right doesn’t mean the school’s Fighting Tigers won’t want to, well, fight for wins anymore.

About 25 people filed into the auditorium to hear a brief overview of the University of Maine’s federally funded Sports Done Right program, find out how it will affect Rockland schools and the rest of SAD 5, and ask questions of the seven-member panel.

Sports Done Right seeks to define healthy interscholastic sports programs at the high school and middle school levels. Rockland is one of 12 pilot sites around the state, and each pilot site is required to hold a community meeting before the end of May.

Rockland High athletic director Tom Forti told the attendees that the panel would leave plenty of time for a question-and-answer session, which it did after an overview of each of the core principles listed in the report.

It took a few questions, but some of the issues that have circulated all over the state were brought up Thursday.

Other audience members asked the panel to clarify Sports Done Right’s stand on competition without conflict, a phrase mentioned in the UMaine program which has engendered a lot of conversation around the state.

“It’s teaching sportsmanship, it’s teaching our spectators to watch a game in a respectful way,” said panel member Joe Keller, a longtime SAD 5 coach. “Competition without conflict doesn’t say that you don’t want to win and I’ve heard that in the community, too.”

Others have taken the phrase to mean equal playing time for all at the varsity level. Tessie Kilgour, who has seen her children go through 23 years of sports at Rockland High, said her daughter, junior Allie Todd, and Todd’s friends were concerned that Sports Done Right and a perceived emphasis on equal playing time would put Rockland teams at a disadvantage compared to their opponents.

Todd plays basketball and soccer, manages field hockey, and is the junior class president. Kilgour said she plans to go home and talk to her daughter about what she heard Thursday night.

“I wanted to find out about this one thing that the kids all seem so concerned about, see if I can straighten them out,” Kilgour said after the meeting. “They’ve been wondering about this. I can go home and I can start squelching that. Because outside of that, they want to see [the tenets of Sports Done Right], too.”

Other issues raised included a perceived lack of school spirit, development of coaches, funding and facilities limitations which threaten to undermine the goal of developing additional opportunities for students who are cut but want to play at some level, and the issue of student-athletes quitting teams.

“I was very concerned and upset about that,” said Don Chisolm, a 1971 Rockland alumnus who heard that several student-athletes left teams this school year.

Other questions were about how to get outside groups like the recreation department involved and how much power the leadership panel would have in terms of hiring and firing coaches.

Panel member Todd Sanders, middle school assistant principal and athletic director, said he and Forti had already met with the rec department, while Forti added that the panel is solely to help guide Rockland’s effort to endorse Sports Done Right.

Karen Brown, the director of the Maine Center for Sport and Coaching which is under UMaine’s College of Education and Human Development, attended the meeting and stressed that the report seeks to be open-ended and let individual school districts decide what’s best for its student-athletes.

Kilgour said the panel and the schools need to take action on what they’ve been discussing.

“They need to put their money where their mouth is,” she said. “I don’t mean big steps, but a slow progression. Only good can come from this as long as we get going.”