Regardless of what I think about drinking by adults, minors, or athletes, I have learned that kids signing oaths or contracts with their H.S. coach is not a guarantee of anything, and that makes me sad.
I feel my son's H.S. coach was a strong, upstanding role model, and that all the kids had enormous respect for him. At the same time, year after year, I saw that kids signed their conduct oath with no intention of abiding by it. Good students, poor students, religious students, troubled kids, it didn't matter.
I am not saying every kid broke the rules, but rather that all the kids had an unspoken understanding that you had to sign it or you couldn't play. After that, unless they were completely & publicly outrageous, they could do whatever they wanted.
We tried to instill in our own kids that this was a black and white issue; if you sign the oath, you follow it ... but I think we failed.
They did learn where we stood. I recall telling one of my sons that I didn't care what happened to anyone else who broke this rule and that if I learned that HE broke it after siging the oath I would remove him from the sport. He later told me (after he graduated) that he honored the oath during the season only.
I would like to think that with so many kids using alcohol and worse that it WOULD make a difference if coaches and schools would enforce zero tolerance. But as has already been mentioned here, how is it fair to expect athletes to exemplify higher standards than non athletes?
Bottom line: yes, education and values do begin at home, but it has been my personal experience that many of us who feel we have a handle on this issue will learn in a few years that, no we didn't have it under control -- the kids just knew how to convince us that we did.
Tough topic!
ktcosmos