The service academies emphasize the importance of building character and use sports to help achieve the moral-ethical development of future military officers. While espousing this lofty goal is praiseworthy, it is uncertain whether sports reveal the moral values of entering students or whether ethical behaviors are fostered through participation on intramural, club, or varsity teams. To obtain baseline data about whether athletics at these three competitive levels contribute to character development, these research questions were explored: What are the existing levels of character of athletes at one service academy, and does the character of athletes differ by sport, competitive level, amount of contact of the sport, year in college, or gender? All students (ages 17-25) at one of the service academies received via the Internet a valid and reliable instrument, designed by the first author, that measures character in sport and completed this survey anonymously. The total number of valid responses was 2217 (1846 males and 371 females), or 53% of the population. The participants checked the competitive level and sport they participated in during fall of 2005 along with their gender and collegiate year. Means and standard deviations for each of 15 items that measured character were analyzed. The means were ranked by competitive level and sport for the survey items to determine if any team's scores (means) were more frequently in the top five or bottom five of the levels of character. Probabilities were analyzed to determine whether these appearances occurred by chance or were indicative of higher or lower levels of character by competitive level and sport. ANOVAs tested for differences between means for the competitive level, sport, gender, class, and contact level of the sport. T tests were used to compare the highest sport means with the lowest sport means to determine if there were any significant differences. Females, freshmen, athletes in club sports, individual sports, and non-contact sports had higher character scores than did comparative groups by gender, year, competitive level, and type of sport. While females and males in club fencing and club sport parachute and males in varsity golf and club volleyball had the largest number of top mean character scores, varsity men's ice hockey, football, lacrosse, and wrestling and females and males in club martial arts had the largest number of low mean character scores.