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What are High School Sports For?
The Oregon Student Activities Association came out with new championship rules (PDF) last week, and even though we're deep in the football state championship season, the reverberations are likely go beyond the gridiron. The new rules were the talk of Central Oregon and Southern Oregon, and at larger schools across the state.
This isn't just about football — speech and band are also OSAA activities — but athletics seem to bring up the fiercest passions (and highest pricetags). At its most basic, the OSAA's new playoff rules get to the heart of what high school athletics are supposed to provide.
Coaches and parents and various sports boosters talk about the many benefits of athletic participation: lifelong lessons in cooperation, dedication, and discipline. How important is league parity? And how much does parity — or a lack of it — affect your experience as a member of a dance or soccer or football team?
In other words, can you learn sportsmanship, and gain the full benefits of a team, if you're always losing to better, bigger schools (or always beating smaller, weaker ones)? On the other hand, can you get the fullest measure of recruiter — and scholarship — attention if you're not playing on the biggest stage?
Should high school athletics leagues — like the big-money college ones — privilege competitive matchups over local (if uneven) rivalries?
And can a hybrid system, which attempts to achieve parity without creating undue travel requirements, make everyone happy?
GUEST:
- Tom Welter: Executive director of Oregon School Activities Association
- David Presley: Chairman and treasurer of the Sky-Em league and state representative for 4A classification for Oregon Athletic Directors Association
- Carolyn Schenberger: Senior at Lincoln High School, varsity cross country runner and club league soccer player
- Brent Walsh: Athletic director and assistant principal for Redmond High School
Tagged as: football · high school
Photo credit: amanky / Creative Commons
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It's true - kids do learn teamwork, cooperation and discipline from sports - but they can learn those things just as well from privately sponsored local leagues after school.
You want to talk about parity and competition?
In a comparative worldwide study in 2007, American students ranked 29th in science performance, behind countries like Croatia, the Czech Republic, and Liechtenstein (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development), and the trend has been downward since then.
If you feel as I do you probably think that spending one dime of our shrinking education budgets on uniforms, equipment and buses is an incredibly shortsighted waste of resources.
And if you don't then you should probably be spending a lot more time on the soccer field with your kids because soccer is going to be an important part of their lives - just like it would be in any other third world country.
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What about the kids that can't afford to play in these "non-school" activities. At least in the schools if you qualify for free lunch you can get fees waived...
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I think we worry to much about creating an equal playing field for youth athletics. of course some schools will have inherent advantages. There is much to learn from trying your best and loosing, it happens in life all the time.
What bothered me in high school was that Football and Baseball were the only sports that garnered attention: pep-rallies, community support, money, and these athletes often received special treament (not being suspended even though caught drinking). Despite the fact that my High School Football team hadn't won much in years, they constantly received praise and funds. Our Cheerleading team won state 11 years in a row and didn't even have a bus.
Football, baseball and basketball almost provide more for parents, community members, and alum than for the student body. In the age of slim budgets I recommend cutting funds for athletics and letting the community support them. Schools would probably not have a hard time getting donations and volunteers and the next time a school levy or tax was proposed the community seeing that football was cut would probably pass the darn thing.
Sports and activities are good for kids, especially if the adults can keep their emotions in check.
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TEAMWORK.
The teamwork of sports, is not a healthy teamwork, it is an ironic teamwork, it is a combative teamwork. The teamwork of competitive sports is an artifice, a sham, because the entire goal and purpose of the teamwork is to destroy and outdo the teamwork of the opposing team. We are learning how to work together---how to get along---so we can ultimately prevail over others, so we can reign supreme. The metrics in the end, however you spin them, are not about camaraderie, they are about what team wins the game. We have added the benefit of teamwork as an afterthought, that is no more valuable then saying: the teamwork of Al-Qaeda is somehow a positive affair. Yes, teamwork gets things done, it makes man more powerful then he might be alone. It builds pyramids. It assembles cars. It runs businesses. It fights wars. Teamwork in its own right is impartial and indifferent, it only becomes useful, when the goal it is applied to is worth achieving.
SPORTSMANSHIP.
An excessively dramatic term, that simply means good manners by a person playing a sport. You can learn the same good manners at the mall while rummaging through a sale---or by driving your car in traffic.
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Oddly enough I may agree with Scottmil a little here, reminds me of a saying in my family
"It does matter if you win or lose, it doesn't matter how hard you try, thats just a measurement of your skills"
true, Ideally winning while putting in as little energy as possible is alot better than working really really hard and losing.
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I think you are miss-led on the reasoning behind the teachings of teamwork in sports. Sports do not only teach teamwork. Kids have an alternative way of learning discipline, commitment, the purpose of preparation (6 P’s = Prior Proper Planning Prevents Poor Performance), hard work, dedication, pride in self, in family, in leaders, etc. If sports are used correctly in high school, they can create a feel of comradery with in a community, which I think everyone is starting to see, that is something our nation has been lacking since the 40’s & 50’s.
In sports, teamwork is a combination of all the above; and yes, it is used as a method of beating the opponent. Just like a business uses teamwork strategies to outperform their competitors, just like college study groups use teamwork to pass their mid-terms & finals, just like armies use teamwork to survive & protect the things their countries believe in, just like families going through struggles come together to overcome and survive.
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jwinkler,
A teamwork with a goal of prevailing over another group of humans is probably not a teamwork for me. If you are correct about the allegedly positive affects of athletics in general then we should see great things from our athletic communities, great things from professional players--- footballers should be great role models for society, and we should be able to look to the NFL and the NBA for inspiration on what we can aspire to be as humans.
Of course I am being a little sarcastic, but it is also the reality of where those statements lead if we follow them. Of course working together with people on anything can teach you how to work together with people, but the end goal is also important, and the goal of competitive sports is not particularly a useful one. Youth would be better served by working together to learn, to create, to build something special. Not to win a futile game. Not to battle their opponents. Whatever benefit (some) youths get from competitive sports, it can be found elsewhere. And, potentially for as many benefits found in competitive sports there could be equal harms.
If, a big if, people felt more camaraderie in the '40s and '50s who is to say why. I don't think a lot of the public felt too much love back then. It was a different time. Perhaps, a more dishonest time. Many people were shoved under the rug, because they weren't allowed to be who they are. If you are suggesting we are less cohesive now, perhaps it is because it takes time to adjust to our slightly freer modern culture. Or perhaps we are all growing further apart, but I don't think competitive sports have to power to save us.
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The amount of public resources spent on extracurricular activities for young people should be spread equally among the interests and talents of all students. Extracurricular sports can be great, but the same resources need to be spent on extracurricular music activities, arts, dance, language club, individual sports (non-team) etc. There is a major inequity in place now between monies spent on sports vs. other activities.
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High school sports are just one thing that makes America great, It doesn't seem fair that small town Football Stars may never have a recruiter from a college / pro leauge see them play. Frankly life isn't fair, many who have been successful were assited by luck, or connections, or family ties.
I suppose the bottom line is, if your school football team sucks, and you lose before the state championship, then you should have practiced more or been better
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I think that you will find that high school football coaching is a relatively small world and that any stand out player would get the attention of recruiters.
I know that skiing is that way, coaches compete with each other but they also talk together after a meet about who is doing well and tell the coaches at colleges who they know about who is up and coming.
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Having worked with ADs in southern Oregon, the problem with "Power Rankings" is that it works on the principle of being able to schedule top teams. In southern Oregon, we could not schedule top teams - they would not travel to Southern Oregon. How can Power rankings work on this uneven playing field?
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With freshmen at South Eugene, a 6A school that has a strong academic emphasis but not much of an athletic reputation, I'm very relieved that the hybrid system is being adopted. I hear horror stories from other parents about late-night trips back from Medford after winter-sports games that I don't want my kids to experience.
Frankly, I don't know what they were thinking when they established the 6A level in the first place . . . certainly not about the overall safety and success of the students.
That said, I think that sports are important and, for my son, might be the only thing that will keep him engaged academically through high school.
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I'd like to see the commercialized sports de-emphasized and the idea of everyone exercising in some way every day re-emphasized.
Go back to the idea of PE, of teaching about many different sports and ways to get exercise so that the kids make some choice of a way to exercise all through their life. And now there are so many more possibilities and forms of moving their bodies, running, yoga, dance, softball, etc.
Train in and reinforce the good habits of exercise.
I'd rather see everyone in the school out running around on the field on Friday nights, doing some form of exercise, it might look chaotic but participating is far better than spectating. Throw footballs, kick soccer balls, run around the track, cheerlead, dance, do gymnastics, get on groups of rowers, ride bikes or bike trainers, do yoga, practice martial arts, anything that gets a person moving and breathing.
Sort of democratising sports so that all participate instead of just the top few. Spread the money out to benefit all instead of the few.
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I like that idea too, but I wonder if the (sad?) reality might be, that human nature isn't much interested in a considered life, in doing things for your own personal well-being---that people have greater motivation to dominate over others---not to simply be the best you can be, but to be better then others can be. I fall into this trap in many areas in life, I think in sports it is more overt or discernible because of the raw and austere function of a predominately physical game.
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I agree with above comment. There is too much emphasis and the lions share of money going towards. "the playoffs". Play schools close to home. If you're school is larger than the surrounding schools start playing your second string first against just the local schools. use the first string for the big schools. All this talk about budget cuts gets me upset when I hear bend schools thinking they have some God given right to multiple travel across the cascades to play similarly sized schools.
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I wonder how Norway and Sweden get so many of their citizens to participate in healthy sports? 3,000 xc skiers at a time, that's awesome?
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American football is a very unhealthy sport with too many injuries and no development of lifelong exercise habits except drinking beer and watching football.
I know far too many former bigtime football players who are decrepit before their time.
I'd like to see more healthy sports emphasized.
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Being healthy is great, Americans vote with thier money - I think a superbowl ad costs more than a commercial during a dance recital on Public Access.
Football is part of our culture, that won't be changing anytime soon. I contend kids are better off playing football than reading or playing XBOX all day.
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Hello Emily:
When I was 13 I went from my home in Chicago to a prep-school (all boys) at Cranbrook School in Bloomfield Hills, MI (near Detroit). Our league was in Ohio. New York, Pennsylvania and Illinios. We had to travel to evey sports contest (by bus) and often that meant leaving on Thursday.
I was not the athletic type but I was interested in being involved so one of the Masters (teachers and Soccer Coach) convinced me to become the Soccer team manager. Normally the manager is looked down upon by the team but I wanted a more active role. Over my four years I managed Soccer and Hockey and earned three athletic letters. At the end of my Junior year I was voted by my peers to be the President of the Athletic Club (the "C" Club). This is a position normally give to a "super jock" like the capain of the football or basketball team and in an all boys school it was an exhaulted position.
This honor and duty was a great boost to my self esteem and I have gone on to other leadership positions in the military, business and civic and political arenas.
Thus, I got into sports through the back door but they helped me throughtot life. We are going to have our 50th class reunion in June 2010.
Broker Bob
Robert J Braud
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We had a kid from Bend, Doug Herley (sp?), who had a crippling disease that kept him from normal sports but he was the Coxswain on the US Olympic Rowing Men's Eight and they did very well.
Ol' Doug is one of my idols for how hard he worked with what he had and how far he took it.
Doug was one more home grown Bend Olympian.
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"Do children learn sportsmanship if they are always losing to bigger, better schools?"
My 12 year old has played competitive soccer for 3 years, prior to that he played rec for 7 years.
He has played on a lower level team and on an A Team.
His sportmanship lessons were learned on the team that was always losing, his soccer skills have been learned through dedication, desire, determination and some talent.
If a child has a desire to become a professional athlete, they will become a professional athlete. Their training may have to augmented outside of the 'school' experience or 'club' experience...but if desire is there...it can happen.
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Comments are now closed.
There appears to be a breakdown between perception and reality. Early school sports programs may teach team work, but when I listen to talk radio, glory is heaped on the specially skilled individual. (Brett Favre comes to mind.) Men worship at the pedestal of the baddest dog in the arena until they get bored with him and tear him down.
Today World Have Your Say discusses Tiger Wood's transgressions and rehashes whether a star's life should be public or private. I'm fascinated and entertained by our distraction with Tiger while our corporations, universities and physical infrastructure are failing and require immediate attention.
Our society prefers competition over cooperation. The American mythos revolves around being number one and chosen by God. Many Americans claim to believe in "survival of the fittest" even as they pillory Darwinianism.
What the hell is wrong with people? I'll take the answer to my question off air!