University of Maine Foundation

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The University of Maine Center for Sport and Coaching is leading an effort to provide a philosophical guide for Maine interscholastic athletics, linking sports to the overall schools' missions and community values, while supporting quality coaching education. One of its tools is Sports Done Right: A Call to Action on Behalf of Maine's Student-Athletes.

In Sports Done Right, student-athletes call for more fun in athletics, winning kept in perspective, and consistent and fair treatment of athletes of all abilities. They also identify practices detrimental to healthy sports experiences, such as negative comments and behavior by parents and fans, win-at-all-costs attitudes and coaches favoring the best players.

"Hearing the students' take on the problems only strengthened our commitment to promote this recalibration and positive change in interscholastic sports," says Dean Robert Cobb of the College of Education and Human Development, who co-chaired the statewide panel that produced the report.

Now a Maine Center for Sport and Coaching Endowment Fund has been established in the University of Maine Foundation with gifts from individuals and businesses dedicated to implementing Sports Done Right. The fund will support the center, which is a national leader in examining and defining healthy interscholastic sports, and presenting recommendations to shape the best possible environment for student-athletes. Gifts to the fund will help promote the principles identified in Sports Done Right.