Community Sports

The American Medical Association calls domestic violence a "public health problem that has reached epidemic proportions." Most victims are vulnerable women and children assaulted by male perpetrators. Most victims emerge physically battered or emotionally scarred. An alarming number end up being murdered.

"It's Not Right"

Sophia and Elizabeth Glazer have a game plan that uses youth sports to help stem domestic violence in their community. Their efforts in the local youth football league this past autumn set an example which will hopefully prompt students elsewhere -- athletes and non-athletes alike -- to help make their own communities better places to live and raise families.

"Sports does not build character. Sports reveals character," said journalist Heywood Broun more than half a century ago. He meant that athletic competition can bring out either the best or the worst in an athlete, depending on the inner strengths or weaknesses that the athlete brings to the game. Sports can be noble or ignoble, depending on who is playing and how they play.

On the night of September 26, 2014, fans displayed the ignoble side of sports at a high school football game in Plainfield, Connecticut. Within hours, however, the noble side prevailed as Plainfield student-athletes confronted a wrong that had reportedly festered in their town's sports programs for years.

When the Overland High School Trailblazers opened their varsity soccer season against the Fairview High School Knights on March 12, the girls were short one player. The referees sidelined Trailblazer Samah Aidah as a result of a pre-game ruling that her hijab, a headscarf worn by Muslim women as a sign of modesty and devotion, created an alleged "danger."

For West End Yellow Jackets football coach Terrance Washington, practice at Russell Lee Park in Louisville, Kentucky on the night of September 12 seemed just like any other practice. Then, as he was putting the Mighty Mite Division team through its paces, he heard parents yelling that a two-year-old girl had just fallen 15 feet into a dark abandoned well 50 yards from the field.

"We were scared, we were screaming, we couldn't get it together," the little girl's cousin said later. "Fortunately . . . , Washington didn't hesitate."