This starts as a story about a kid named Dick, a country boy who wanted only to hang out with horses. His dad thought he needed a bit of "culture," however, so he insisted that Dick take ennis lessons. Dick reluctantly agreed, figuring he'd go through one lesson and that would be it.

The tennis instructor served the ball over the net, Dick returned it, and the instructor said, "Wow. You hit that ball right in the center of the racket.Just like Rocky Marciano smashes someone in the jaw. Didn't that feel terrific?"

It felt so terrific, actually, that Dick gave up horses for tennis. That brief but memorable moment of reinforcement from a coach started him on a life of playing and coaching tennis.

Dick is Dick Gould, who will be retiring as a coach next year after leading the Stanford men's team to 17 national championships.

Jim Thompson, a former Stanford business-school administrator and founder and executive director of a group called Positive Coaching Alliance, uses the illustrative anecdote about Gould in the introduction of his new book, "The Double-Goal Coach: Positive Coaching Tools for Honoring the Game and Developing Winners in Sports and Life" (Harper Resource Trade Paperback, $13. 95).

Thompson is convinced that something needs to be done about the way many adults coach youngsters, and the way a lot of parents, coaches and young athletes conduct themselves at sporting events.

"There is a nationwide epidemic of poor sportsmanship at all levels of youth sports," Thompson writes.

"In recent years, violence has escalated by not only the young athletes imitating the showboating and trash-talking antics of the professional leagues, but by coaches and parents as well. This is alarming when the fact is that 40 million kids play youth sports in this country, and 70 percent of them stop playing by the age of 13."

Thompson, who lives in Palo Alto and teaches a course on leadership at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, believes there is a better, more productive way to get kids interested in sports and keep them interested, and he has enlisted a wide range of support from many coaches at all levels.

Lakers coach Phil Jackson, one of the most prominent, wrote the foreword for Thompson's book, and serves as national spokesman for the Positive Coaching Alliance. Pistons coach Larry Brown is another strong backer.

The 300-plus-page book is filled with teaching tools and strategies that Thompson says "reflect the best practices of elite coaches and the latest research in sports psychology."

Much of the material is merely common sense, but it's offered at a time when that commodity seems badly needed at all levels of youth sports.

Is Thompson's message being heard amid the cacophony?

Well, check out this response from a volunteer coach who recently attended one of Thompson's Positive Coaching Alliance workshops in Southern California:

"I believe the workshop should be mandatory for all coaches of school-age children," the coach wrote the Los Angeles Times.

"Many volunteer coaches have little or no training in fundamental playing skills. The very least they should have is a solid grasp of PCA principles. A negative coach can teach kids to give up -- on sports, on themselves, on life. The PCA proves that, at least for kids, sports really is a metaphor for life."

E-mail Dwight Chapin at dchapin@sfchronicle.com.

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