Preparation for The Day Holiday Classic, last month's four-team hoops foray at Mohegan Sun, included an assignment to ask participants about sportsmanship: What is it, what does it look like and how is it best implemented? The plan was to produce a 90-second video to air both on the big board in the arena and on the livestream.

The video never happened.

It's not that the kids and coaches didn't understand the concept of sportsmanship. But their ambiguous responses suggested that they just couldn't articulate its essence beyond anything anecdotal, our best strategies to frame questions notwithstanding.

I understand that not everything fits into a sound bite. Still, it puzzles me why such a popular topic, which often invites every Tom, Dick and Harriet to sound like they wrote the manual on the subject, is so hard to define — and why sportsmanship appears more abstract than concrete, more subjective and objective.

More fodder for debate came earlier this week when Sacred Heart Academy of Hamden won a girls' high school basketball game 92-4 over Lyman Hall. It's become the state's latest cause celebre, with Sacred Heart suspending coach Jason Kirck for one game and school president Sister Sheila O'Neill issuing the following statement:

"Sacred Heart Academy values the lessons taught and cultivated through athletic participation including ethical and responsible behavior, leadership and strength of character and respect for one's opponents. "(Monday) night's girls' basketball game does not align with our values or philosophies.

"Sacred Heart Academy Administration and Athletics are deeply remorseful for the manner through with the outcome of the game was achieved. We are in communication with Lyman Hall High School, the Southern Connecticut Conference and CIAC, and are addressing these concerns internally to ensure that our athletic programs continue to encourage personal, physical and intellectual growth."

My early education taught me never to argue with a nun. Still, I hope Sr. Sheila understands that sportsmanship issues are more endemic at Sacred Heart than she may think. Lest we forget that while Kirck was encouraging pressure defense while his team ran to an 80-0 lead after three quarters, the person in charge of the school's Twitter account for athletics decided to keep tweeting updated scores.

When it got to 59-0, NFA girls' basketball coach Courtney Gomez responded, "Why is this being tweeted? Wow."

Sacred Heart has since deleted the tweet. But that doesn't change the facts: Another school employee thought 59-0 was just swell.

More evidence: The Sacred Heart girls' soccer team defeated Lyman Hall 11-1 in the fall. Weren't seven goals enough?

This is a wonderful opportunity for Sacred Heart — hardly the lone sportsmanship offender in Connecticut — to lead the charge in meaningful public discussion about sportsmanship and its tentacles. Current discourse is barely cursory, such as the CIAC's well-meaning, but ultimately toothless "Class Act School" initiative designed to "promote sound sportsmanship principles in our schools."

The sportsmanship standards are often read via monotone by players or public address announcers before games, using bromides like "we view the court/field as an extension of the classroom." It sounds noble. But based on what people say and do at games — from catcalls in the bleachers to coaches running up scores to lackeys tweeting about it — sportsmanship is widely dismissed because it has become too abstract and subjective.

Sacred Heart — as well as other schools throughout the state — should make sportsmanship part of the curriculum. I'd argue that sportsmanship has as many ties to sociology as it does sports. And so rather than the courts and fields being "extensions of the classroom," let's get the concepts of decency and respect from the courts and fields directly into the classroom.

It would encourage the kids and teachers to entertain varying viewpoints and to think critically enough to perhaps think twice the next time they think scoring the 11th goal or pressing with a 40-point lead is a good idea.

The compulsory statewide reaction to Sacred Heart 92, Lyman Hall 4: Get thy pound of flesh. Pile on Kirck. Except that he's not even the only offender in his school.

Here is an opportunity to be more reflective than punitive. More thoughtful than vengeful. An opportunity to communicate and educate. To bring sportsmanship from the catacombs of our minds to the village green. From abstract to concrete.

This is the opinion of Day sports columnist Mike DiMauro