Before we dive into our collection of good sportsmanship quotes, let’s establish a good sportsmanship definition. Once we have it defined, we can jump into why sportsmanship is important and how you can teach kids about it. Or, if you prefer, you can just skip to our good sportsmanship quotes by clicking the link below.
Good sportsmanship can be defined as playing a game fairly while respecting the rules, coaches, opponents and teammates.
Skip to Good Sportsmanship Quotes
Why is sportsmanship important in sports?
It can often go unnoticed, but good sportsmanship is the oil in the machine of organized sports. When athletes treat everyone with respect, competition thrives, and that helps each and every athlete.
Low-level competition can be a great confidence booster, but it’s not a good teacher.
When an athlete breezes through competition, they can develop bad habits and learn to take short-cuts. Those bad habits and short cuts can eventually hamper their overall potential and development.
On the flip side, athletes that are constantly meeting difficult competition are more likely to train hard and perfect the minutia of their technique in order to establish a competitive edge. Therefore, quality competition can be one of the most helpful drivers of an athlete’s development.
The best athletes in the world reach their full potential by going up against the top competitors. It’s a common story that all the greats share; no one rises to the top on their natural skill alone.
If tough competition is the best teacher then how do you foster it? With good sportsmanship, of course.
When competitors respect the rules and each other, all athletes have the opportunity to exhibit their best skills. That’s because when there aren’t any distractions, everyone can fully focus their energy on performing their best.
Furthermore, when athletes respect their coaches and teammates, they’re also able to embrace the best teachings and benefit from the best team support.
It’s clear then, in order to reach the pinnacle of an athlete’s potential, good sportsmanship is key.
Teaching Sportsmanship Rules to Kids
Teaching sportsmanship rules to kids is a great way to instill fair play practices in our youngest athletes. These habits may seem like intangible skills, but their impact can go a long way.
If you’re a coach that trains young athletes, developing sportsmanship skills across your team can create a valuable support system for everyone.
When you have a support system, an athlete knows they can turn to their teammates for help.
By creating a system and culture of support, athletes can avoid going through struggles alone. Whether those struggles are performance based, or personal, having a support system can be priceless. In this way, sportsmanship skills can be a big help when handling mental health issues like bullying.
Sportsmanship rules for kids
Good sportsmanship for kids starts with reinforcing the golden rule: treat others the way you would like to be treated. Beyond that, there are four pillars of good sportsmanship to keep in mind when teaching kids.
1) Sportsmanship rule #1: Celebrate your teammate’s successes and support them when they struggle
This is a great first step when teaching kids about sportsmanship because it can be learned during practice and games. For those kids who are highly competitive, practicing good sportsmanship can simply begin with clapping when their teammates do well. Or, it can start by helping a teammate that’s struggling during practice. In either scenario, kids can begin to “walk the walk” of sportsmanship.
2) Sportsmanship rule #2: Respect the competition whether you win or lose
Practicing good sportsmanship during competitions and games helps everyone develop to their fullest potential. When teaching kids about sportsmanship during games, it may help to re-frame their competitor.
For example, you could tell your athletes that their competitors would actually be on their team, if they lived a bit closer. Let them know that it’s good to be competitive, but it’s important to be respectful.
3) Sportsmanship rule #3: Appreciate all judges, referees, and officials
Respecting judges, referees and officials is an important sportsmanship practice to instill at a young age, and it’s especially important to remember when athletes get older and competition gets more intense. It can be helpful to remind athletes that referees, judges and officials are there to help the competition. Without the input of these individuals, there would be no organized sports!
4) Sportsmanship rule #4: Respect your coaches and their advice
Often times, this rule of sportsmanship will come easier than the others. But for those athletes that struggle with this rule, flexibility can go a long way.
When giving instructions, it may be helpful to provide athletes with the chance to respond to coaches after instruction is given. That way, they feel like they have some say in their practice. Furthermore, for those athletes who stray from drills and instruction, it may be helpful to add flexible elements to their practice. As discussed in our Coaching Tips article, adding a free form element to practice can help keep athletes engaged.
Ultimately, developing great sportsmanship skills comes from consistent practice.
As with all elements of sport, it’s helpful to observe the sportsmanship practices from the best athletes in the world. That’s why we’ve collected sportsmanship quotes from some of the best athletes and experts in history.
We hope you’ll enjoy this collection and share it with any coaches, parents and athletes that may benefit from it.
Sportsmanship Quotes for Kids
1) “The high road is always respected. Honesty and integrity are always rewarded.” – Scott Hamilton
2) “Be more concerned with your character than with your reputation. Your character is what you really are while your reputation is merely what others think you are.” – John Wooden
3) “You can have a certain arrogance, and I think that’s fine, but what you should never lose is the respect for the others.” – Steffi Graf
4) “Win or lose, do it fairly.” – Knute Rockne
5) “It is your response to winning and losing that makes you a winner or a loser.” – Harry Sheehy
6) “The mark of great sportsmen is not how good they are at their best, but how good they are at their worst.” – Martina Navratilova
7) “Class is striving hard to be the best at what you do while taking the needs of others into consideration” – Roger Staubach
8) “After I hit a home run, I had a habit of running the bases with my head down. I figured the pitcher already felt bad enough without me showing him up rounding the bases.” ― Mickey Mantle
9) “Sportsmanship to me is when people help each other out even if they are competing against each other.” – Loudy Wiggins
10) “Do you know what my favorite part of the game is? The opportunity to play.” – Mike Singletary
11) “Victory is remembered for at most two decades; an act of good sportsmanship is remembered for a lifetime.” – Simon Nguyen
12) “When you win, say nothing. When you lose, say less.” – Paul Brown
13) “Sports teaches you character, it teaches you to play by the rules, it teaches you to know what it feels like to win and lose – it teaches you about life.” – Billie Jean King
14) “You can’t win unless you learn how to lose.” – Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
15) “Strive to be the best, but keep an open mind. Question even the obvious and relevant. Always take the high road – you’ll never regret it.” – G. Raymond Chang
16) “If you win through bad sportsmanship, that’s no real victory.” ― Babe Didrikson Zaharias
17) “Sports do not build character; they reveal it.” – Heywood Hale Broun
18) “Victory is in the quality of competition and not the final score.” – Mike Marshall
19) “Always imitate the behavior of the winner when you lose.” – Unknown
20) “If you don’t lose, you cannot enjoy the victories. So, I have to accept both things.” – Rafael Nadal
21) “Life is a game. Have the sportsmanship to enjoy it.” ― Tapan Ghosh
22) “One man practicing sportsmanship is far better than 100 teaching it” – Knute Rockne
Good Sportsmanship Quotes for Teams
Great sportsmanship can also be a recipe for team success. This means that being a good teammate and practicing team sportsmanship can help lead you to victory.
Even if you’re the star of the team, true sportsmanship requires that everyone is humble and supportive of one another. The following quotes show us that the best acts of sportsmanship can be as simple as getting your teammate some water.
23) “I’ll do whatever it takes to win games, whether it’s sitting on a bench waving a towel, handing a cup of water to a teammate, or hitting the game-winning shot.” – Kobe Bryant
24) “Be the best teammate you can be, be the best player you can be, and just be as supportive and encouraging for the people who are playing.” – Kelley O’Hara
25) “I get asked a lot about my legacy. For me, it’s being a good teammate, having the respect of my teammates, having the respect of the coaches and players. That’s important to me.” – Peyton Manning
26) “You shouldn’t just work on your jump shot. You should work on being a better person, a better teammate, and a better friend.” – Sue Wicks
27) “Being a good teammate is when you try to sprint down a ball that everyone thinks is going out of bounds. But you go after it anyways and you get it.” – Mia Hamm
28) “Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships.” – Michael Jordan
29) “Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much.” – Helen Keller
30) “It takes two flints to make a fire.” – Louisa May Alcott
31) “Disrespect is bad for the atmosphere around a team.” – Sergio Ramos
32) “The important thing is that your teammates have to know you’re pulling for them and you really want them to be successful.” – Kobe Bryant
33) “Definition of a great teammate: a person who makes their teammates look great.” – Emily Kohibus
34) “I am a member of the team, and I rely on the team, I defer to it and sacrifice for it, because the team, not the individual, is the ultimate champion.” – Mia Hamm
35) “The nice thing about teamwork is that you always have others on your side.” – Margaret Carty
36) “Collaboration begins with focusing on the collective good rather than personal gain.” – Jane Ripley
37) “I’m a very temperamental person, but when you are wearing the captain’s armband for Real Madrid or the national team, it’s best to express yourself in a different way. You have to maintain a sense of unity – a good atmosphere where everyone feels happy is one of the keys to success, and that’s something you shouldn’t lose.” – Sergio Ramos
If you liked these quotes about sportsmanship, you may also enjoy our collection of motivational quotes by female athletes.
