Sportsmanship is a funny thing. Unless you coach a Division I football program, running up the score is simply not kosher. So what happens when two high school teams with significant disparity in talent or depth collide?

A pair of Texas girls basketball teams played a basketball game two weeks ago, and one team beat the other 100-0. Now there’s a big stink about one team not playing fair.

Covenant School of Dallas, a private Christian school, shut out Dallas Academy by that embarrassing score on Jan. 13. A few days later, school leader Kyle Queal said,” It is shameful and an embarrassment that this happened.” Days after that, Micah Grimes, Covenant’s head coach, said he disagrees with Queal. “We played the game as it was meant to be played. My values … will not allow me to apologize for a wide-margin of victory when my girls played with honor and integrity.”

I’m not sure this needs all the media attention it’s getting, but it is fair to say it has increased the ever-voluble discussion about what’s fair and not fair in sportsmanship.

I’ve seen my share of painful blowouts in Sequim sports myself, just in my short time here. Two games come to mind: This last October, Sequim’s football team crushed Kingston, a program in just its second year, 74-0. The result was frankly shocking, not that Sequim would win but by the margin and the haplessness of the Buccaneers. After all, Sequim beat Kingston 33-7 the year before and Kingston figured to be no worse in 2008.

The second: In 2002, Sequim’s girls basketball squad was in a fairly competitive match-up with Port Angeles, and the Roughriders led Sequim’s Wolves 49-32 at halftime. In the second half, Port Angeles scored 43 points and held Sequim to zero. Nothing. Nada. It had Sequim players literally crying after not managing a point for 16 minutes. Final score: Port Angeles 92, Sequim 32.

I mention these because we see fair play in both and can take lessons from both.

In the hoops game, Port Angeles’ reserves were in by the time the margin got to be 25 points or so, and still Sequim couldn’t manage to find the basket.

End result? Sequim players got over it. They didn’t pout. In fact, they went 10-2 in league, 14-5 overall and won a West Central District game before getting bounced by Lindbergh. In fact, Sequim hasn’t had as many wins since that season.

In the football game, Sequim coach Erik Wiker saw the Wolves throw the ball a total of five times, none after halftime. He started substituting by the second quarter and still the Sequim players, mostly second-, third- and fourth-stringers, managed 14 second-half points. The Wolves racked up 500 yards rushing.

Kingston coach Dan Novick said the game wasn’t embarrassing, that it was Sequim’s job to score and his team’s job to stop them. And even though Sequim put on the brakes in a way, a blowout seemed, in retrospect, inevitable. Pulling players as soon as the score got out of hand was the right thing to do, an unspoken but obvious tack in the game of fair play.

I recall something Wiker told me during a mid-season practice as his Wolves were eyeing a repeat as league champions. He told me that he’s not in the business of running up scores, that the kind of sportsmanship one sees in a 100-0 basketball game (or lack thereof) comes back around. He knows, after serving as an assistant to Sequim’s 60-point losses to Lakes’ football teams in 1999 and 2000.

It comes around. Me, I’m not superstitious, but I’m thinking that’s some bad karma to rack up a 100-0 score on anybody.

A parent who attended that game in Texas said Covenant players were still trying three-point shots in the fourth quarter of the recent blowout. I wonder how Micah Grimes, the Covenant coach, would react were he the coach of Dallas Academy, the team on the losing end.

Interesting side note: The Sequim coach on the bad end of that bad second half against Port Angeles seven years ago? Erik Wiker.

What goes around, comes around.

Check out more of Gazette sports editor Michael Dashiell’s blog entries at: search.sequimgazette.com/sportsblog. Reach him by email at: miked@sequimgazette.com.