Athletes Making Video to Promote Sportsmanship

By Damien Maniscalco and Mike White School officials recently came together to raise awareness about sportsmanship throughout high schools in the area. Sportsmanship is an aspiration that a sport or activity will be enjoyed for its own sake, with consideration for fairness, ethics, respect, and a sense of fellowship with one’s competitors. Branford High School wants to show students how they express and demonstrate it, said Principal Lee Panagoulias. Panagoulias, along with the video production class has come up with an idea to show how the act of sportsmanship affects the school by creating an informational video. Captains of some of the sports here will be the ones starring in the video. Many of them know that sportsmanship is a big idea throughout high school sports. “The sportsmanship at our school represents who we are. We all take it into consideration and root for our teams in a respectful manner, but also in a way to pump the team up.” Says Tyler Criscuolo, Senior Captain for the boys hockey team. Learning good sportsmanship means finding that positive attitude learned on the field or court – or even at a pep rally – that carries over into other areas of life. At school, for example, students are able to appreciate the contributions made by classmates and know how to work as part of a team to complete a project. By creating this video “We hope it will start a conversation, and with this it will raise awareness to show that the town of Branford as a whole portrays good sportsmanship,” said Mr. Panagoulias. An act of good sportsmanship is positive and sends off a good vibe. And there’s bad sportsmanship which sends off a bad vibe and can start trouble. Fan sections usually are known for having bad sportsmanship in order to get into the other teams head. Fan sections start bad chants to distract and upset the other team so there team does better on the court or field. This gives the fan section and the school that they represent a bad reputation. But if a fan section only expresses good sportsmanship towards the opposing teams, it would give everybody they represent a good name. BHS knows the good and the bad sides of Sportsmanship and are making this video to well educate everybody else. Branford portrays how they act and how people should act and as Mr. Panagoulias says “how to be a fan not a fanatic!”