Sportsmanship Matters

I got tired of sportsmanship being a sidebar.
Our coaches can ignore sportsmanship completely, perhaps miss a game or two and move right on.
Normally sportsmanship is a tie-breaker; however the top teams rarely are close enough that they would be in a tie - so there was no real reason to cultivate sportsmanship.

Last year we tried tying sportsmanship to the points accrued; for instance, if the team would have normally scored 10 points for a 3-0 shutout, but only receved 90% of the sportsmanship points (missed 2 points, for instance) - the team would only receive 9 points.

This really only affected a few of the mid-level teams, so once again was not a real attention getter.

THIS year, we have a new plan:  if a team fails to maintain 95% of their maximum sportsmanship points - they are not eligible for playoffs, after season play, etc...