WP3- Sports Aggression

Article Summary

For my WP3, I chose an article titled “Experiencing aggression in sport: Insights from a Lacrosse World Championship tournament” by John Kerr and Jonathan Males. The article focuses on four different types of aggression proposed by a colleague. The researchers then applied these four types (play, anger, power, and thrill) of aggression to sports by matching each type to a specific and outlined playstyle. After games took place at the World Lacrosse Championship, the researchers would conduct interviews with the participants to gather information on both (a)the player and team’s goals prior to and during the game, and (b)the player and team’s goals following the game. The interviews were recorded and transcribed and then the researchers would look through each interview for instances of the four different types of aggression.

Younger Audience Transformation

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Athlete Contract

I,______________, will strive to compete, try my best, and have fun while playing in the Writing 2 High School Lacrosse League. I will respect my teammates, opponents, coaches, and referees. Within those standards this contract is to be signed by all the High School Writing 2 lacrosse players.

As an athlete, I know it is my responsibility to:

1. Aim to be better at the end of each day.
2. Work collaboratively with my teammates.
3. Effectively communicate with my coaches.
4. Exhibit great sportsmanship and play fairly.
5. Maintain a high-level of safety awareness.
6. Win with honor.
7. Lose with dignity.

As a condition of membership to Writing 2 Athletics, each player must be familiar with the four types of sports aggression and which types are deemed legal or illegal by the rules of Writing 2.

Type of Aggression	Legal/Illegal	Description
Play	Legal	Acts of aggression within the specific rules of the sport. Ex: Hip checks or legal body contact.
Power	Illegal	Intimidating actions in attempt to dominate opponent. Ex: Late hits and unnecessary roughness
Anger	Illegal	Retaliation to an opponent's action.
Thrill	Illegal	Unnecessary acts to provoke an aggressive response from an opponent to find out what ensues. Ex: Trash talking

All athletes must also recognize that all fouls committed resulting from one of  the three illegal types of aggression will result in a penalty detrimental to their team and that aggression can be used positively to motivate your teammates and keep them accountable for each other.

________________________

Signature of Athlete

Older Audience Transformation

To: Parents of High School Writing 2 Lacrosse Players

From: admin@writing2.com

Subject: Pre-season Welcome

Hello parents and guardians of all Writing 2 athletes! We are as excited as you are for the start of the 2016 High School Summer Lacrosse League. This is our fifth annual summer league and we can not wait to get the boys back out on the field. We look forward to watching them battle it out on the weekends and most importantly have fun! Due to increased safety precautions this year, we would like to inform the parents about the four types of sports aggression which could cause your child to hurt himself and/or his opponent(s) while also earning a penalty for his team.

The four types of aggression include play, power, anger and thrill and all of them except play aggression are considered illegal under the rules of Writing 2. Examples of actions/penalties that may have been executed by your son while experiencing one of these types of aggression can include but is not limited to: cross-checking, slashing, illegal body-checks especially to the head and/or neck, spearing, and any type of unsportsmanlike conduct. If you notice your child consistently committing these types of fouls, please remind them and make sure they are aware of the three illegal types of aggression. If the problem continues, please talk with your child and advise your coach to monitor your child. Safety is our main concern at Writing 2 and while we know lacrosse is a dangerous sport, keeping your children safe is our top priority. By holding the parents as well as the athletes accountable for their actions we can strive for a safe and fun summer season. We can not wait to see all of you back out on the field!

Go Team!

-Administration of Writing 2 Athletics

Self-Analysis

I remember a thread of back and forth emails between my girlfriend and Zack regarding the third writing project and how her genre transformation ideas were not fulfilling the criteria for the assignment. She was clearly annoyed and aggravated due to the fact that almost all of her ideas were being rejected by the big cheese. Already enrolled for the same class in the Spring Quarter, I was not looking forward to this genre transformation and could already see the coming frustration soon to loom over my own head as it did with my significant other. Thankfully, this was not the case as I took the advice of my teacher; “When given the opportunity to choose a topic for schoolwork, pick something of interest to you”. Throughout both transformations, I included specific lacrosse terms to engage the younger audience, and inform the older audience while including information about the four types of sports aggression seen in the research article.

Creating a new piece catered to a younger audience out of the scholarly research article would be a challenge, so I decided to produce a required contract written by a sport league’s administrators. Each athlete is required to sign it before playing; something I had seen and had to sign many times before. Just like Losh and Alexander state that, “adopting an identity can be about doing real research – not just putting on a costume” (Losh and Alexander 125), I modeled the contract off of one I had to sign each of my four years of high school in order to participate in varsity athletics. This specific contract was written by CIF, the governing body for high school sports in California. The governing body I created was named “Writing 2 Athletics” which would be hosting a high school lacrosse league. The conventions of this contract which included a list of sportsmanlike actions, an introduction to the league itself, and a place to sign one’s name, assisted me in creating my transformation.

Contracts are inherently boring, and the people who sign them--especially high school athletes-- are known to glance through the contract and sign their name without fully reading the whole legal document. Almost always the contracts are not sport specific and tend to include generic information solely regarding the rules of the governing body. To make the piece less drab, I decided to include the league’s general rules with other useful information displayed in a table that the athlete may find interesting and perhaps assist them in becoming a more informed and knowledgeable lacrosse player. For example, to illustrate the different types of aggression which can hurt or harm players, I included specific examples of fouls that players are familiar with. Next to the type of aggression is an example of the type of foul that was caused by the aggression. Including them side by side solidifies that the players know exactly which type of aggression leads to which type of penalties that inevitably are detrimental to their team.

When I first thought of an older audience to transform my piece to, I thought of my constantly-worrying, scared mother whose son was about to begin his first season of lacrosse. After not allowing me to play other contact sports like football and hockey, she was skeptical about the dangers of this new sport. Losh and Alexander claim everything you write is “influenced by what you know about the audience’s expectations” (7) and while I created my new transformation I wrote to my own perception of a maternal audience who is worried about the safety of their child.

The welcome email written by the administrators of the league sent to the parents and guardians of all players’ main goal was to ensure that the players would be safe and that in this specific season, safety would be a top priority. To establish this point of emphasis I included the four types of aggression seen in the scholarly article written by Kerr and Males. To appeal to the audience of worried parents, I used pathos by including the second person point of view with phrases like, “your child” to “evoke an emotional response” (Carroll 53). The response would not encourage the parents to pull their children out of the sport, but it would encourage a heightened awareness about the safety of the players, which is also mentioned as “the league’s top priority.”

Another feeling that mothers or parents hate to experience is helplessness, especially when their child is the one in danger. By stepping on a lacrosse field, each player is inherently placing themselves in harm’s way, but by giving the parents addressed in the email a task of their own to do, this feeling of helplessness would be alleviated. For example, the parents were instructed to inform their children of the three illegal types of aggression which can lead to unsafe play. They were then directed to contact their coach if their child continued to display any signs of aggression.

While most parents do not know the game of lacrosse as well as their children, I included words like slashing, cross-checking, and spearing that referees announce when informing spectators of a penalty committed by a player. The parent will then be more knowledgeable about identifying the different types of aggression and determining whether their child is showing these harmful and dangerous signs of sports aggression.

Within both transformed pieces I included specific penalties to achieve different goals. In the piece for the younger audience, I used them to keep the audience of high school athletes interested and engaged in the contract that would normally include boring and general guidelines to good sportsmanship, but nothing on a specific sport. The specific penalties were included in the piece assembled for an older audience, to inform the audience of nuisances within lacrosse that the parents may have not known about which also indicate signs of aggression. The second piece also included the use of the second person point of view to evoke an emotional response by the parents and a plan of action to relieve the feeling of helplessness that parents experience while watching their children play a contact sport.

Works Cited

Carroll, Laura Bolin. “Backpacks vs. Briefcases: Steps Toward Rhetorical Analysis. “Writing      indentplzSpaces: Reading on Writing. Print.

Losh, Elizabeth M., and Jonathan Alexander. "Spaces for Writing.”

Understanding Rhetoric: A Graphic Guide to Writing . N.p.: n.p., n.d. N. pag. Print.
Kerr, John H., and Jonathan R. Males. "Experiencing Aggression in Sport: Insights from a Lacrosse World Championship Tournament." N.p., n.d. Web.