Winning With Character

Winning With Character  provides character and ethics education resources to collegiate and high school athletes.  The purpose of the program is to:

•      Challenge athletes to reach their full potential in the classroom, on the field, and in society.

•        Provide understanding, reasoning, and application of moral and ethical principles.

•       Change thinking (year 1) and behavior (years 2 through 4).

Winning With Character was initially developed for the University of Georgia football team. 

Coach Mark Richt had a belief in the importance of the personal development of his players and through this belief Coach Richt, Bobby Lankford, and Sharon K. Stoll developed Winning With Character.  For more on the development of Winning With Character you can visit the website at www.winningwithcharacter.org.

Winning With Character stands apart from other character educational programs in the following ways:

1. combines informal (influences) and formal (reasoning) educational methods

2. utilizes research-based curriculum targeted to student-athletes

3. contains embedded facilitators and mentors within the local sports program

4. conducts pre and post testing measurement evaluation

5. consists of professional academic content, backed by 14 years of research

6. it is a service and consultative supported program 

Our model focuses on two questions:

• Are my actions honorable?

• Are my actions responsible?

These two questions have laid the base for our evaluative measurement instruments to create a database covering over 80,000 students across 250 high schools and university sport studies over the past 17 years.

Our measurement tools are based on the belief that:

1. character is learned;

2. learning has a definitive, cognitive process;

3. if learned, character can be taught, and

4. if taught, character, or principled thinking , can be measured and improved 

Leadership Team

• Bobby Lankford - President & Director, Winning With Character