Or you start with you and your team. If you are a parent you work on it in the parent room and with your kid. If your a coach you take the step to change your mind set if you find yourself trash talking. Yes you will always find people who trash talk but it doesn't make it right or mean it is okay and you need to get over it. BE THE CHANGE instead of using excuses for the behavior. Expect more from others and stand up for the change in yourself and in others.
We had a small issue on the team of one of my kids it was minor a misinterpreted text. BUT the first response on the team was this is a no go we as a team are better than this we stick together. The girl apologized and explained she did not mean anything by it. The parents and coaches also focused on the issue and worked together to make sure the girls knew our stance and our gym's stance.
It is avoidable you just have to make the choice and have adults that act as adults and make it the expectation to be better than trash talking.
Not so much as excuses but you have to understand everyone doesn't think like you and I. I'd love to live in a world where there's no trash talking but you can't help someone who doesn't want to be helped, nor can you stop people from expressing their feelings.
Quick question... if you own a gym (this is for anyone who wants to reply) would you remove a child from your gym for saying "team xyz is terrible, they drop every stunt at every comp"? First part is an opinion and the second part can possibly be a fact.
Trash talking also depends on how it's taken, I seen on twitter ( I won't mention names) but kids from one gym called kids from another gym "cheaters" because they cross from an L4 to a worlds team the entire season. That was deemed as "trash talking" and "bad sportsmanship".
None of you know me and I usually come off as arrogant Whenever I post in the boards for some reason, but I assure you, I understand trash talking is bad, I agree w some points that were made above as well, I promise. But I honestly think it's something you have to get over until USASF makes it a rule that athletes can't tweet whatever they want... which may never happen because USASF doesn't own their athletes. Until athletes start getting removed from programs for "bad sportsmanship" nothing will change IMO. I haven't seen anything wild, except for the MAJOR twitter epidemics that I'm pretty sure we all know about. But those are way different than me tweeting "team xyz is so trash, their stunts aren't even level five". And even if people do get something said to them, that's where the anon accounts come into play, honestly people can't even post about how good a team is because people get in their feelings! I've seen "I think wild is so much better than Nfinity" and someone got bent up over this opinion.
Don't think I'm crazy people, I just wanna get it through heads that it's going to take A LOT to change bad sportsmanship and it won't happen overnight, but instead of crying about it, let's take some things into effect and address some coaches or something.
