Thanks for the link leptallbldgs.
I too tried to educate players before play started, however was not brave enough to try to get them to attend a workshop. I considered it, but figured no one would show, and our sports program had been so disfunctional for so long, I couldn't take the chance that that would flop, and we'd start a new season on a downer.
Instead I created a "Sportsmanship Contract" which was a short collection of writings by church leaders on sportsmanhip, explainations of commonly misunderstood rules, and our "House rules". It took about 10 minutes to read. Then they had to take a one page test on both sportsmanship concepts, and rules. They literally couldn't play until it was completed (first couple of weeks a lot of people madly flipping through the brochure and answering questions on the bench while their teammates were already out and playing on the court. We let them go into the game only after it was turned in.) It seemed to work pretty well. Just having everyone actually know some basic rules has cut down on arguing very much.
I have contract, and my version of rules (crude, ongoing work, but it's a place to start, I will check your link and add good stuff from that resource that I can add) Also on the site is schedules and standings our website.
http://groups.msn.com/Stakesports. I also print a copy of the rules on the back of the schedule that we hand out. We adopted a theme "Goal Beyond Victory" as well, which is repeated everywhere on everything we hand out.
5 weeks into season, everything going well, keeping fingers crossed.
-Working hard to keep church ball from becoming "The brawl that begins after prayer"-
Roto