COLUMBUS — Sportsmanship has been a hot-button issue with the Ohio High School Athletic Association for many years.

The OHSAA has poured a lot of effort into its ‘Respect the Game’ moniker.

Unfortunately, as it’s pertained to this basketball season, the message has evidently fallen on deaf ears.

Ejections are occurring all across the Buckeye State at seemingly an alarming rate and the Ohio Valley Athletic Conference membership hasn’t been immune either.

As of earlier this week, five OVAC members — Barnesville, Bridgeport, St. Clairsville, Shadyside and Shenandoah — have all had a player and/or coach tossed from a game this winter. And the Zeps just had a player ejected this past week, giving them two infractions for the season.

“I think it’s a combination of a lot of things that’s led to the number of ejections,” OHSAA Director of Sport Management Jerry Snodgrass said during a recent interview. “There’s a societal issue and there’s different ways of expressing anger and frustration. Plus, the emphasis that society puts on winning plays a role, too.”

As of late last week, there had been 87 ejections in boys basketball, including 21 coaches, and 35 in girls basketball, including nine coaches.

Those numbers — though they seem large — are actually on pace to be down from the last three years in which there were 175, 103 and 132, respectively in boys hoops and 52, 43 and 37 in girls.

“Most of those ejections are at the sub-varsity level, too,” Snodgrass pointed out.

The OHSAA follows the guidelines of the National Federation of High Schools for ejection policies directly involved with the sport. However, each state has the ability to adopt its own punishements.

The state of Ohio requires athletes to sit out two games, while coaches must sit two games, pay a $100 fine and take an anger management class online.

Though the OHSAA mandates the above, it also allows — and even encourages — its more than 800 members to go above and beyond that punishment if they see fit.

“We put a lot of emphasis on that to our member schools,” Snodgrass said. “I have heard a lot of cases, of late, where schools are doing more, too. We have people — both schools and parents — who don’t support the two games, but we feel it’s a fair penalty.”

Bridgeport did. After an incident late last month, in which a video of a fight during a game against Madonna went viral and was all over social media, the Bridgeport administration met. It decided to remove the offender from the team, suspend him from school for two weeks and if he wishes to play a spring sport, he has to complete an anger management course.

Some probably think that the penalties levied for an ejection are too stiff. However, let’s keep in mind that playing sports isn’t a right. It’s a privilege and with privileges come responsibilities.

Plus, sports are an extension of the classroom. If you fight someone or get out of control in the classroom, there are repurcussions that come with it. Same goes for athletics.

“I think it’s incumbent for school officials — as leaders — to set the tone,” Snodgrass said. “Sometimes they have to tell kids no. Sometimes they have to tell kids what they don’t want to do and hear. That should be our goal as leaders and teachers.”

None of the other schools imposed any further penalty athletically.

St. Clairsville, which is the only school to have a coach ejected, actually saw its incident removed from the books.

Every official, who ejects a player or coach, is required to submit a report of the incident to the OHSAA. Those are then reviewed in Columbus.

As it pertained to St. Clairsville, Snodgrass, who oversees basketball, deemed that the coach should have never been ejected.

“The coach was incorrectly ejected in our eyes,” Snodgrass said. “The official made the coach leave (the game) when he shouldn’t have.”

Regardless if it’s parent, school or even attorney, the OHSAA does not release those reports publically and very seldomly does a coach or player not have to serve his mandated punishment.

“For the most part, we’re always going to go with the official,” Snodgrass confirmed. “The case with St. Clairsville, though, clearly didn’t meet the requirement to eject a person. Anything else, though, that is an official’s decision, we will 100 percent support the official’s call.”

Obviously, the incidents in the Ohio Valley are what we hear about the most, but this is clearly just a small sliver in the OHSAA’s pie. Snodgrass pointed out several incidents that have occurred across the state, including a game earlier this month when 17 players were ejected from one game.

Another involved the school incident in southwest Ohio where a flagarant foul was committed, but none of the officials saw the play. So, the player remained in the game. However, school officials did see it happen and took matters into their own hands. They suspended the player for more than two games.

Though it’s garnering attention, basketball isn’t the worst sport as it pertains to ejections, according to Snodgrass.

“Soccer is a real challenge,” Snodgrass said. “We had 220 ejections in soccer last fall. We’re looking at different things and measures, but I think it’s probably further down the road that we’re able to implement something.”

Maybe — just maybe — if the players and coaches exhibited a little bit more self-control when times get tough or situations get heated, the OHSAA and school administrators wouldn’t have to focus so much time and effort on these types of things.

Unfortunately, that — like the OHSAA’s policy — seems to be further down the road, too. I guess all we can do until then is try our best to ‘Respect the Game.’

Staskey can be reached via email at sstaskey@timesleaderonline.com or at twitter.com/TLSportsSeth