Nassau holds sportsmanship symposium for athletes, coaches

When Eric Caballero dove into the trends surrounding the behavior of coaches, student-athletes and spectators in Nassau County high school athletics, he became concerned.

It was evident that sportsmanship, or the lack thereof, was becoming a major issue. The Bellmore-Merrick athletic director co-chaired a committee of nine athletic administrators across Nassau, and they knew it was time to be proactive and create positive change.

Beginning in November, the committee met monthly and began laying the groundwork for an event that would bring student-athletes together to promote positivity through the “three pillars” of unity, sportsmanship and civility.

A lengthy and arduous process came to fruition Friday. Over 400 participants — four student-athletes and two coaches from each Section VIII school — attended the first Unity Summit hosted by the Bellmore-Merrick Central High School District at Brookside School in North Merrick.

“I’ve maintained that you don’t have to be bad to be better,” Caballero said. “So we’re approaching — we’re not necessarily bad yet with 60 member schools — but the data is approaching bad. So you can either sit back idly and wait, or you can take meaningful steps to have positive change. And that’s why we put this event together.”

“We’ve seen so many different things going on,” added Wantagh athletic director Jennifer Keane, a member of the committee. “With athletics, we’ve had an increased number of ejections.

“ . . . There’s got to be the level of respect between everyone — the athletes on the field, coaches, officials. So that’s really something [that] needed to be done. And we said, why not now?”

In addition to sportsmanship, Keane also cited general respect from individuals — whether it be to the opponent, teammates, the game or even themselves — as a problem.

“Honestly, even beyond sportsmanship, it’s civility and empathy that you’re seeing,” Caballero said. “Whether it’s boys sports, girls sports, whatever season, those three things seem to have gone missing as of late, right? I mean, listen, the landscape in society is what it is, right? It’s very volatile right now. So all that stuff trickles down to schools.”

Summit attendees arrived in the morning in color-coordinated shirts and filed into the auditorium where they were introduced to the three pillars by keynote speaker Mark Leinweaver, an MLB agent and speaker for Why Character Matters.

The student-athletes — either freshmen, sophomores or juniors — and adults were then broken into groups, attending workshops with Leinweaver, Ward Melville High School counselor Leah Jantzen, Positive Coaching Alliance’s Kim Conway Haley and athletic leadership consultant Lamar Lee to hear presentations about unity, sportsmanship, civility, grit and empowerment.

Luke Perfetti, a junior tight end on Wantagh’s football team and defenseman on its lacrosse team, was impacted by what he learned from Jantzen.

“She was telling us how she ran an Ironman and came 37th in the world championship in Hawaii,” Perfetti said. “And she was saying how — even though she didn’t want to wake up and train every morning — she wanted to complete the Ironman more than she didn’t want to wake up. So she was saying how whatever you do, it doesn’t matter the outcome and other people’s opinion. It just matters pushing your limits and showing yourself how good you can be.”

Mepham sophomore Ava Parisi, a defender on the varsity soccer team and a JV lacrosse player, also recognized the importance of the messaging presented.

“We’re all competitive, and we all want to win,” Parisi said. “But again, at the end of the day, we’re all there for the same reason — to experience the game together and do the sport that we love. Even just those small gestures could really change the outcome of the game.”

By Ben Dickson

benjamin.dickson@newsday.com@bendickson__

Ben Dickson joined Newsday’s high school sports staff in 2023 after graduating from Maryland, where he covered several of the Terrapins' teams.