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By Rick Foster
February 18th, 2008
FOXBORO - Professional athletes cheat by taking performance-enhancing drugs.
A coach disregards league orders against videotaping opponents and when caught, blames a difference in "interpretation."
Young athletes are constantly bombarded with conflicting messages from professional sports - be sportsmanlike, but trash-talk your opponents; lie, but don't get caught.
However, questionable or unsportsmanlike conduct by role models need not poison lessons youngsters take from sport, says Jeffrey Pratt Beedy, a leading sports ethicist and founder of an international program to use sports as a positive influence in children's development.
"Sports can be a powerful medium, either positive or negative, for the social and emotional development of children," said Beedy, founder of Sports Plus Global, which seeks to use sports as a common language to promote peace and healthy patterns of development in kids.
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