ALBUQUERQUE - About three-dozen high school athletic directors, sports officials, school superintendents and administrators, and some New Mexico Activities Association directors were on hand last week for the implementation of 'Pursuing Victory with Honor,' a sportsmanship initiative for the state.

The Josephson Institute of Ethics conducted the seminar; the institute works to improve the ethical quality of society by teaching principled reasoning and ethical decision-making.

Implementation will be much easier than following through, undoubtedly, because of the pressure to win, not only by coaches but also by their players. The two-day 'Ethics in Sports' seminar was held Wednesday and Thursday at the Marriott Pyramid Hotel in Albuquerque. The principle goals of the seminar were to promote and foster good character by teaching, enforcing, advocating and modeling the 'six pillars of character:' trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring and good citizenship.

"Pursuing Victory With Honor will benefit all students in our state and the NMAA is excited to be a part of such a positive approach to improving sportsmanship in New Mexico," said Gary Tripp, NMAA executive director and a former principal at Rio Rancho High School.

That won't be an easy task at the youth level: Many youngsters choose to emulate those supposedly considered to be role models in professional sports, but what kinds of examples do they set by recent antics such as fighting with spectators in the stands, corking a bat, players caught using steroids or, most recently, 'mooning' the opposing team's fans?

Harold Slemmer, executive director of the Arizona Interscholastic Association, led a discussion on Wednesday. He urged those in attendance to peruse a list of 35 sportsmanship/gamesmanship situations, which were then to be ranked as clearly proper, acceptable, troublesome or clearly improper.

Here's a sample question from each sports used as an example:

Baseball: A catcher intentionally 'frames' the pitch to make a ball look like a strike;

Basketball: Player X is fouled but Player Y, the team's best free-throw shooter, sneaks to the line, hoping officials were distracted;

Football: A coach instructs the groundskeeper to soak the playing field to slow down a faster opponent;

Hockey: A player illegally alters a hockey stick in a manner that is undetectable;

Soccer: A player deliberately fakes a foul against an opposing player already handed a yellow card, in hopes of seeing him red-carded and removed from the game;

Tennis: A ball is called out although the player is certain it hit the line, but says nothing; and

Volleyball: An official makes a mistake in the score; the coach who benefits from the mistake says nothing.

There also were some generic sports situations, such as parents screaming at coaches for 'bad' decisions, coaches using profanity, players booing and jeering opponents from the bench, and trash talking.

"People do not see the world as it is," Slemmer said. "They see it as they are, from their perspective. Our job is to expand that perspective."

Too many coaches encourage gamesmanship, believing it's all part of the game - anything they can do to bend the rules, or do something not explicitly spelled out in a rulebook, is acceptable for them. Slemmer said he knew of a baseball team that had its field constructed so the opposing team was always looking into the sun, and of a football team that hid rattlesnakes close enough to their field that opposing players were intimidated.

The players copy those attitudes. For example, a short-hopped pass thrown to a receiver results in the player popping up from the turf, holding the ball high for everyone to see.

After all, they may reason, isn't it national radio talk show host Jim Rome that babbles, "If you're not cheating, you're not trying."

And someone else once stated, "It's not cheating if you don't get caught."

Or, as a fellow named Harry Sanders was quoted in saying in Sports Illustrated in its Dec. 26, 1955, issue, "Sure, winning isn't everything. It's the only thing."

But is that the proper attitude for athletes and coaches to have; is that the way they'll conduct their lives away from the field?

Slemmer gave two examples of how youngsters learn gamesmanship, of a sort, from their parents: In one instance, a father uses a radar detector to continue speeding, breaking the law, until the tone sounds and he knows a policeman is ahead with a radar unit; or a mother who takes her 13-year-old to a movie, notices kids 12 and under cost $3 less to get a ticket, and instructs the child to tell the ticket-seller he is just 12.

Good or bad, Slemmer said, "We all have a conscience; the more you listen to your conscience the more demands it makes on you."

He asked for scrupulous integrity: "That means you are by the book ... Guilt is a good thing; guilt is what keeps us in line."

A new movie, 'Coach Carter,' depicts a basketball coach who put integrity above the 'Win at any cost' mantra.

The new movie, which premiered Friday, was, according to an Internet site, "inspired by true-life story of controversial high-school basketball coach Ken Carter, who received both high praise and staunch criticism when he made national news in 1999 for benching his entire undefeated basketball team for poor academic performance."

The Richmond, Calif., coach later carried the Winter Olympics torch on its way to Salt Lake City in 2000; several of his players went on to four-year colleges and his own son headed to West Point.

In reality, however, there aren't that many 'Coach Carters' around these days. Hopefully, 'Pursuing Victory With Honor' will soon become more than well-meaning intention in New Mexico.