Ottawa Rec Sports Code of Conduct

ORS’s primary goal is to provide a safe, recreational space for players to exercise, socialize, and participate in a community.

In order to make this possible, all players and staff are required to abide by the code of conduct below.

1) There will be no verbal harassment of any staff or player on the field at anytime. This includes yelling, swearing, threatening, insulting, degrading, humiliating, hostile or offensive language aimed at teammates, opponents, referees or staff. No bullying, racism, sexism, or any other other-ing to demean any person.

If you or a teammate have an altercation with the staff or an opponent, your first duty is to remove everyone from the conflict and help deescalate the situation. After this, the captains and ref staff should meet together to discuss the problem and agree together on how best to deescalate any physical play, make sure no one is entering the field angry and sit any players who are unwilling or unable to play safely.

2) Dangerous play will not be tolerated in any form. Refs will be responsible for identifying and punishing dangerous play through their enforcement of the rules, but teams are responsible for making sure their teammates understand why a play is dangerous and in ensuring they adjust. Some dangerous play is caused by players who have trained from a young age to play extremely hard, some is caused by players who are clumsy or do not know how to tackle from a safe angle, and some is caused by players who play angry and retaliate for fouls with intentional fouls. All three cases are different, but we require teams to recognize all three and take responsibility for pushing their teammates to adjust their play.

3) All conflicts on the field should be relayed through your teams captain or co-captain who should then speak calmly to the ref at half time or during an appropriate stoppage in play. At no point are players allowed to follow staff around the field yelling at them over a call they disagree with. If captains are speaking to ref and coordinator staff calmly, their concerns should be listened to. But teams should not expect staff to listen if they are shouting, swearing, insulting or otherwise harassing them.

4) We require all teams to cultivate a culture that makes safe play and sportsmanship an essential team goal that the team works together to achieve. This means recognizing when teammates are violating #1, #2, or #3 and taking steps to change their behaviour. Teams should talk about sportsmanship and teach one-another how to tackle safely, the importance of learning to control your own momentum, and the importance of apologizing and accepting apologies graciously. Your team’s reputation is important and we will not accept them into our community if we reach a point where most opponent’s do not enjoy playing you and we do not trust the captains to make any significant effort to police their and push their culture towards safer & friendlier play.