The Nassau County Sportsmanship Committee has approved the creation of the first annual Nassau County Sportsmanship Awards Program commencing this school year.

This award is not affiliated with B.O.C.E.S. or Section 8 and its mission is to raise the consciousness level of all athletes, coaches, parents, spectators and students to promote good sportsmanship at all Nassau County sporting events.

High Schools across the county will accumulate special sportsmanship points toward determining the school with the best overall approach to good sportsmanship, in all sports, throughout the entire school year.

Simply stated, the process will require all Officials/Umpire Organizations to report the results of the top five schools in their annual Varsity Sportsmanship Award Program. The reported schools will receive the Nassau County Sportsmanship Award, based on their place (1-5) in each association's final tally.

First Place - 10 points

Second Place - 7 points

Third Place - 5 points

Fourth Place - 3 points

Fifth Place - 1 point

All Nassau County Sportsmanship Award points will be credited to the appropriate school. In June, each school's points will be added together to establish a Total Point Accumulation (TPA) for every high school in the county. The TPA for each school will then be divided by the number of varsity sports that a school participates in during the entire academic year. This will establish each school's Sportsmanship Grade Point Average (SGPA). The SGPA for each high school will be properly ranked with all the schools in the county to determine the annual Nassau County Sportsmanship Award winner, first runner up and second runner up (only the top three schools will be announced).

The winning school will receive a totally unique, specially crafted Sportsmanship Award for the school to retain. In addition, the school with the highest SGPA will receive a large Nassau County Sportsmanship Trophy (styled after the Stanley Cup) engraved each year with the school's name. Moreover, the winning school will be presented with the Nassau County Sportsmanship Awards Banner. This large banner will contain white and orange numbers and letters on a blue background indicating the winning school's name for each year from 2001 to 2010. The latter two awards (trophy and banner) will be perennial awards that will be presented to the winning high school each June.

The first runner-up will receive a smaller version of the Nassau County Sportsmanship Award to be retained in the school while the second runner-up will receive an even smaller version of the award.

Many major companies on Long Island will welcome the opportunity to sponsor the creation of a Nassau County Sportsmanship Awards Program such as Cablevision, Computer Associates and Newsday.