As schools work to prevent further shootings and violence by installing metal detectors, posting armed guards and even the Ten Commandments, a new breed of athletic coaches are weighing in with a different approach.

They have begun using sports - with their explicit reliance on rules of behavior, teamwork and authoritative supervision - to teach young people tolerance and respect for each other.

On their terrain, after all, fighting has become commonplace. In Decatur, Illinois this fall, seven high school students threw punches and kicks -- and in a few cases each other -- over the rails of a grandstand during a football game. It has become routine to hear not only students trash-talking each other, but also coaches themselves taunting players into greater efforts with comments like, "What are you, a bunch of sissies?" Or, "Go out there and hurt somebody!"

A different sort of coaching, however, can contribute to a school-wide climate that refuses to tolerate bullying, and which teaches skills and strategies for defusing conflict before it leads to violence. Coaches and physical education teachers are ideally positioned to help counter both harmful media images and the routine hostilities of competitive play, says Ron Slaby, a developmental psychologist with the Education Development Corporation in Newton, Mass., and an expert in youth violence.

"In the old days, I was a jerk," says Bill Miller, football coach at a Vermont high school, referring to his years as a player and college coach. Miller recalls taunting opponents on the field, belittling women off the field and drinking heavily between games. This, he explains, was what he thought it meant to be a "cool" athlete.

But time made Miller see things differently. By his mid-thirties, he recognized not only that his behavior was insulting and beside the point of athletic competition, but that it got in the way of his being a good player and coach.

In response to growing concerns about the behavior of young athletes, several state athletic organizations have developed new rules to establish better sporting standards. The Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association (MIAA), for example, passed a no-taunting policy in 1994, classifying any behavior meant to demean or ridicule another player as a "flagrant unsportsmanlike foul." The regulation leaves no room for excuses: The automatic penalty for an offense is dismissal from that game, as well as the next two.

"We decided there was no way we would allow the disruptive behavior and attitudes that kids see every Saturday and Sunday in collegiate and professional athletics," says Bill Gaine, deputy director of MIAA, which represents 344 schools. "If no one tells them it's wrong, they'll just replicate it."

The National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) has gone a step further. It has released a new curriculum entitled "Citizenship Through Sports and Fine Arts." The athletics component of this manual offers coaches numerous tips about how to teach respect and good sporting behavior, whether during practice or a championship game.

"This curriculum isn't a pie-in-the sky effort to eliminate all bad examples from school sports, and it isn't anti-competition," says Robert Kanaby, executive director of the NFHS. "We have to teach civility in competitiveness. We have a tremendous opportunity to do that in school athletics because of the enormous interest young people have in sports."

Stepping up to the plate

At Brattleboro Union High School, in the southeastern corner of Vermont, coach Miller sips a Pepsi from an oversize plastic cup as he strides about his office, rarely pausing to sit during a two-hour conversation. Miller is a former All-American football player and Gettysburg College coach. Young people are drawn to him like fans to a rock star. They stop in his office to talk about a game, a relationship, a drug problem, you name it.

At the beginning of every season, Miller calls a mandatory meeting for players and their parents, in which he announces his rules of the game. He asks parents to be present because he wants their support. He also wants to pre-empt complaints if one of their sons or daughters is suspended from a game because of a violation of the rules.

Among Miller's rules: Any player who puts down a teammate, taunts an opponent, argues with an official, or scores a touchdown and does anything but hand the ball to an official will be pulled from the game. Further, any player who gets into a fight will be pulled from that game, plus the next two. Parents who engage in disruptive taunting as spectators at a game will be asked to leave.

Jason Houle, an 18-year-old senior who has been on the team for three years, thinks Miller's message is something most athletes want to hear. "It makes me feel respected," he says, "to think that somebody cares about what others think about us. I don t want to be thought of as a bad person."

Starting young

While the problems of violence and trash talk may be more acute in high school sports, the middle school years are a critical time for instilling good sporting behavior, argues Ann Junk, a physical education teacher and boys' track coach at Sproul Junior High in Colorado Springs.

Teachers, coaches and administrators at Sproul have worked together to create a school-wide climate that doesn't tolerate bullying, whether in the cafeteria or on the athletic field. "You don't have to be a licensed social worker to say that [abusive] language won't be tolerated," Junk explains. "You just have to have a standard line you can use when it happens."

When she hears trash talk, such as "You stupid fag!" Junk simply stops the game and says: "That's mean-spirited and unfair, and we don't allow that here." Then she instructs the offending student to walk around the track, think about what he or she did wrong, and come back and talk to her after cooling down.

Art Taylor of Northeastern University's Center for the Study of Sport echoes the need for pre-formulated, supportable ultimatums. "This isn't something that necessarily takes a lot of time," he says. "It takes a very effective statement, such as: 'I don't care if you're the star player or the last player on the bench: If you're involved in any violence, you're off the team.' Then back it up the first time it occurs."

Junk also relies on a 12-lesson curriculum entitled "Aggressors, Victims, and Bystanders." The curriculum guides students to examine their beliefs about conflict and violence and to develop skills and strategies that help them to think before they respond. The program's four-step approach to conflict -- keep cool, size up the situation, think it through and do the right thing -- is not particularly novel, but its emphasis on the bystander's responsibility is.