Sport in Society
How one Northeastern Center is combatting hatred through the beauty of sport
By Heidi Happonen
Recently, I learned about a high school basketball game where students in the stands began taunting the ref with slurs and expletives. No one did anything about it. In fact, many of the parents and other adults tacitly laughed in benign support of the behavior.
Chances are, you’ve witnessed something similar at a youth sports game. Perhaps you felt helpless to do anything about it. Maybe you got caught up in the emotion of it all and played along.
This is just one example of the kind of negative language and threatening environments that are all too common in youth sports today.
The Center for the Study of Sport in Society at Northeastern’s College of Professional Studies is on a mission to change that. And much more.
Founded in 1984, the Center for the Study of Sport in Society is one of the world’s leading social impact organizations. Through empirically proven training and solution-based advocacy, the Center uses the power of sport to create inclusion, challenge the institutionalization of racism, prevent interpersonal violence, provide trauma support, and tangible skill sets to circumvent the micro-aggressions of negative normative culture. They see sport as a place to create a new paradigm of empowerment, personal validation, leadership skill acquisition, workforce development, public service, community engagement, and economic empowerment.
The Center has developed curriculum and delivered training to Major League Baseball, for the National Football League, at the South African World Cup, to every branch of the military, for the NFLPA, to every major college conference, to police departments, community groups, the New England Patriots Charitable Foundation, and to hundreds of other high schools; locally, nationally, and internationally.
Three years ago, the Center launched a partnership with then-Attorney General Maura Healey and state and school leaders throughout the Commonwealth to create positive change and safe and healthy environments for young people in school sports. Developed in-part in response to a rise in hate-based incidents at school events, the Center deployed a series of regional trainings for school and athletic leaders.
“We came into these trainings with the goal to listen first,” explained Nicolette Aduama, Senior Associate Director for the Center. “With that mindset, we were able to develop and integrate actionable tools and trainings across all of Massachusetts with some powerful results.”
One outcome of those results was recent recognition at the MIAA’s annual awards banquet with their NFHS State Award for Outstanding Service Massachusetts Recipient In recognition of service and contributions in support of high school athletics
Through the years, the Center for the Study of Sport in Society has partnered with the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association (MIAA) for initiatives such as the Massachusetts Student-Athlete Citizenship Day Ceremonies, MIAA Wellness Summit, MIAA Sportsmanship Summit and a Bullying Prevention Institute. This most recent award specifically recognized the success of their three-year partnership with the Attorney General’s Office and their series of Addressing Hate in School Sports Regional Trainings.
These trainings were designed to empower school and athletic leaders with the skills and tools requisite to build safe space communities through a deeper understanding of how unconscious bias, toxic speech, and other micro-aggressions, specific to interpersonal incidents of violence, can be identified, responded to, and eradicated.
Incidents like the one at that high school basketball game.
According to Aduama, the goal of these trainings is for all school and athletic leaders to gain concrete tools that can be immediately implemented to prevent and address hate and bias in sports within school districts.
Sport is beautiful.
For youth, research shows that physically active youth are less likely to be obese, have lower health care costs and have reduced risk of heart disease, stroke, cancer and diabetes. Teens who participate in team sports are less likely to use drugs, smoke cigarettes and carry weapons. Sports teach lessons in problem solving and collaboration. Sports teach us to trust others and perhaps most importantly, sports teach us how to succeed and how to learn from our failures. No one likes a sore loser. On the field or in life.
Even if we don’t participate in sport, we can be fans. A shared love of a team can bridge a multitude of differences and unite otherwise unlikely kindred spirits around a shared passion. When championships are won, entire cities, states and nations come together to share in the joy. The Olympics puts that on a global stage, allowing us to recognize the accomplishments of athletes around the world. Sports make the world both bigger and smaller, and as such serve as a powerful stage to tackle the ugliest parts of our society as well as celebrate the very best we have to offer.
Sport is beautiful.
But just as it can bring out the best of us and our communities, it can also bring out the worst. Thankfully, organizations like the Center for the Study of Sport in Society are helping us all lean into the better parts of ourselves and truly embrace sport as a place to lift up and support others. Both on and off the field.
The Center for the Study of Sport in Society at Northeastern University on Facebook
