WESTERN SKIES - November 22, 2005

*** SMALL TOWN SPORTSMANSHIP ***

ERIC WHITNEY: Bad behavior in sports has been getting a lot of attention recently. From pro basketball players brawling with fans to little league dads arguing with umpires. Some small schools around Colorado are going the extra mile to teach their students good sportsmanship. They treat visiting teams like guests and work hard to create a congenial atmosphere among players, coaches, and fans. Shanna Lewis visited one of these schools in the rural ranching community of Custer County.

[sound of high school marching band]

SHANNA LEWIS: A good thing about the homecoming parade in tiny Westcliffe, Colorado is that if a mom misses snapping a photo of her kid or one of the class floats as they cruise the five blocks down Main Street, there's a second chance, because the entire parade turns around and comes right back up the same route, ending at the school. It's an important weekend and the whole town has been gearing up for days. A huge tower of old lumber and palettes was stacked for the big Friday night bonfire. Thirty-foot flames roar into the night and a few hundred locals crowd the school parking lot.

[sound of crackling fire and cheering at bonfire]

LEWIS: The ashes are still smoking the next morning, as Custer County Athletic Director Glen Livengood gets ready for the day. The Custer County Bobcats take on the Sargent Farmers. These are small school districts of about five-hundred students each. Livengood stays busy.

GLEN LIVENGOOD: Seven miles is what I walk in game.

LEWIS: You have a pedometer?

LIVENGOOD: I put one on in the last game. I did seven miles in a football game. When I started at ten thirty in the morning until we wrapped up the game at four o'clock till we get done feeding everyone.

LEWIS: In addition to making sure the clock is on, the field is lined out, the gate people are ready and myriad other activities, Livengood also spearheads the school's sportsmanship program. That means hosting the visiting team and their fans both during and after the game.

PUBLIC ADDRESS ANNOUNCER: We have a special welcome today to the Sargent Farmers from across the Valley. Welcome! And Sargent people, you are more than welcome to the tent to your left. We welcome you and hope you have a good day.

LIVENGOOD: What we do is we set up a hospitality tent for the visiting fans to come in. Student council is our host for that hospitality tent, same with the meals that we feed the visiting kids. All the parents and everything can come over to our hospitality tent, have coffee, have coffee cake, and it just makes them feel at home and lets them know they're in a nice place. It's just a way of treating them nice and they do the same for us now at the places we go. Parents have started doing the same thing. It's just a good thing.

LEWIS: Custer County's hospitality efforts are noticed. Mike Roth is the father to a couple of visiting Sargent high school athletes.

MIKE ROTH: I've had a lot of experience over the years with Custer County. I had a daughter that played volleyball and they came up here for a match and literally Custer County put them up for the night, bought them pizza, rented movies for them, gave them breakfast the next morning before they went on to the next town to play. So, to me Custer County just epitomizes great sportsmanship.

LEWIS: Zach Hammonds graduated from Sargent a couple of years ago. He says things are friendlier now.

ZACH HAMMONDS: I think overall it's starting to get a little better. When I graduated there was quite a few illegal hits but I haven't seen nothing that's even been close today so its been good. All my coaches took it really seriously so hopefully the rest of the coaches are taking it really seriously and giving it to their teams to treat everybody else the way they want to be treated on the field. Play a fair game, hit hard and that's all you can do.

LEWIS: Jim King, one of the referees for today's game, says he's watched Livengood in action for a few years.

JIM KING: One of the things I see is a tremendous effort on his part and now it's carried over to his staff and to the young people. To make it a positive environment and encourage people to be positive and make it a pleasant environment.

LEWIS: The game ends, the Bobcats lose to the visitors twenty-two/thirteen. But over in the school's multi-purpose room, parents and students are setting up dinner for both teams. School nurse and football mom Gail Stoltzfus is dishing up sloppy Joes on homemade rolls while some students put brownies out along with other goodies.

GAIL STOLTZFUS: We started a practice a couple of years ago where we felt like it was important to host the teams who come to visit. Sometimes they come quite a ways. Sometimes they don't have access to restaurants. So we decided that we could feed them here and just show them a welcome. The AD, he's the one that gets it kinda started and then the parents all chip in and the kids help serve and we just kind of make a whole school affair.

LEWIS: Freshman Leah Coleman is among the students helping out.

LEAH COLEMAN: I'm filling up the lemonade for the other team. It's just hospitality food for the other team for playing us a hard game.

LEWIS: The Custer team trickles in, the boys are subdued as they pick up plates of food and sit at the long tables. They're hungry and tired after a long game. Bobcat player Hans Voll talks about his school's hospitality.

HANS VOLL: I think it's fine. When you go to other places and there's nowhere to eat afterwards and you have to go home hungry and that's not very good cause you're hungry. So I think it's good that we feed them so they have something to eat before they go home.

ANDREW SEEGERS: I think it's really good.

LEWIS: Junior Andrew Seegers plays on the Custer County team too.

SEEGERS: If you lose a game and you come out here and you see the other team at the tables across from you, it's just like you're pissed and you feel like you shouldn't be feeding them, but I think it's a really good thing that the moms and stuff are doing it.

LEWIS: After a little while the visiting Sargent players wander in and get plates of food. In a perfect world the Custer kids would invite them over or the Sargent team would offer up their appreciation for a good game. But in the real world both teams keep to themselves; and the Sargent kids take their food outside to eat. Nonetheless, their coach Terry Van Bibber says their grateful for the hospitality.

TERRY VAN BIBBER: I think it's a great idea. We do it at our place. We started it actually down in the San Luis Valley during our baseball season and we share a round with the other teams. It's turned out to be a great deal, the kids are battling it out on the field and they have great camaraderie after the game. You see a lot more camaraderie with the kids during the summers and stuff because they get to know each other a little better and there's less animosity between them.

LEWIS: Even as at the post game dinner is winding down, Custer Athletic Director Glen Livengood hasn't stopped. He's gearing up for tonight's volleyball game against Cotopaxi. He stocks up on giant containers of red licorice.

[sound of volleyball game]

LEWIS: When the match begins, Livengood is out working the crowd, on both sides of the gym.

LIVENGOOD: Hey, who likes licorice?

UNIDENTIFIED GIRL: I do! I do!

LIVENGOOD: We need to remember we're a small town and that's what people move here for is because we're a small town. If you don't remember why you're here you lose it. I just thought "Gee, it would be nice to treat them like guests." And that's how we treat them: like their coming to our house. Instead of foes or opponents. We play competition; but then when it's done we're friends again.

LEWIS: Custer County has been sponsoring sportsmanship activities, since Livengood became the Athletic Director six years ago. Last year his efforts were recognized by the Colorado High School Activities Association.

For Western Skies, I'm Shanna Lewis in Custer County, Colorado.