In Defense of High School Sports

[CarsonPalmer]

Just a small trend on the board that has bothered me. It appeared in the education thread, but was such a wide tangent I couldn't address it without hijacking that thread. So, I put it here.

Basically, I'm noticing that a lot of people are dismissing high school sports as worthless money wasters. It doesn't have to be that way. Coaches can have a great impact on a struggling kid, and teach them character. The problem is not the sports, it is the sports out of control.

Sports can teach determination, commitment, teamwork and loyalty. A good coach instill all these values and teach a kid how to develop these values and apply them to other things. I know that is how it works at my school. I was just hoping to say that high school sports have a great worth, and it will be a sad day when such a force for uniting and teach young men and women is eliminated.

[Jalinth]

But coaches can have an equally destructive impact. Depends on the coach

As far as money wasters, if the coach is earning $80K plus, has 5 paid assistants and your median teacher at that school makes $40k, your school or town has badly misplaced priorities.

I have no particular problem with school sports in general, but I have an incredible problem when a school revolves around a sport. Not only is the tail wagging the dog, the tail is hurting the rest of the animal. My (now very old) Ontario high school was a good case in point. Very solid academically, and had a very good music program, reasonable drama, and sports that ranged from average to extremely good (soccer was generally one of the top in the city). But the school was academics first and the rest as icing. The icing made high school life much more interesting, helped keep the cliques from becoming too rigid, and otherwise was very helpful but the underlying academic cake was very solid and produced very good students - most of whom went to university.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

High school?

Shit, it's college sports that are the real worthless money wasters...

[Durandal]

A coach making more than a math or science teacher is an utter travesty and an insult to the educational field in general. If schools want to pay such exorbitant salaries to coaches, then those salaries should come entirely from private donations, not tax dollars.

[Medic]

A coach making more than a math or science teacher is an utter travesty and an insult to the educational field in general. If schools want to pay such exorbitant salaries to coaches, then those salaries should come entirely from private donations, not tax dollars.

LOL!

Another travesty of modern education is my high school (the home of Reggie Bush, but I digress): when I was a senior there was still on on-going (2 years at that point) problem with having enough paper (basically, the school went from being able to print whenever and as much as they wanted) to having to pay for all out-of-class print jobs and rationing it as much as possible. Paper is an example, for the most part, money was tight across the board.

BUT THEY HAD ENOUGH FOR A BRAND NEW ARTIFICIAL TURF FOOTBALL FIELD. At least at my school all Physical Education teachers HAD to teach a non-PE related class as well. And all this probably did was put a teacher sympathetic to his student-athletes possibly teaching some of his players (so they stay elibible GPA wise to play).

[Big Phil]

Just a small trend on the board that has bothered me. It appeared in the education thread, but was such a wide tangent I couldn't address it without hijacking that thread. So, I put it here.

Basically, I'm noticing that a lot of people are dismissing high school sports as worthless money wasters. It doesn't have to be that way. Coaches can have a great impact on a struggling kid, and teach them character. The problem is not the sports, it is the sports out of control.

Sports can teach determination, commitment, teamwork and loyalty. A good coach instill all these values and teach a kid how to develop these values and apply them to other things. I know that is how it works at my school. I was just hoping to say that high school sports have a great worth, and it will be a sad day when such a force for uniting and teach young men and women is eliminated.

What do you expect on this board? A lot of the people on it never played high school sports. Plus there's a large foreign contingent and I don't know that other schools officially sanction sports the way American high schools do.

[LongVin]

I'm glad I went to a high school that had no sports teams at all. Our closest thing to a sports team was the chess team.

[Shinova]

I don't really get the whole stigma against high school sports. Is it cause of bad experience with jocks? I mean, if they wanna play sports while in high school, let them, barring stupid things like PE teachers earning way more than regular teachers of course.

[RedImperator]

I've seen the positive side of high school sports at the school at which I work. It gives the school something to celebrate, and help solidify a common identity. That's not a small thing among a student body where neighborhood rivalries have led to shootings in the recent past.

[LongVin]

I don't really get the whole stigma against high school sports. Is it cause of bad experience with jocks? I mean, if they wanna play sports while in high school, let them, barring stupid things like PE teachers earning way more than regular teachers of course.

Its more that schools will devote huge chunks of their budget for running sports programs and let the academic programs suffer.

[Joe]

Shit, it's college sports that are the real worthless money wasters...

We've been over this before, Spanky. Most big college athletic programs are funded primarily through alumni donations/ticket sales and they do not receive substantial amounts of funding from state governments. Furthermore, successful college athletic programs tend to bring national recognition to schools (Boston College is the traditional example) and by extension, more dollars.

[Balrog]

Just a small trend on the board that has bothered me. It appeared in the education thread, but was such a wide tangent I couldn't address it without hijacking that thread. So, I put it here.

Basically, I'm noticing that a lot of people are dismissing high school sports as worthless money wasters. It doesn't have to be that way. Coaches can have a great impact on a struggling kid, and teach them character. The problem is not the sports, it is the sports out of control.

Sports can teach determination, commitment, teamwork and loyalty. A good coach instill all these values and teach a kid how to develop these values and apply them to other things. I know that is how it works at my school. I was just hoping to say that high school sports have a great worth, and it will be a sad day when such a force for uniting and teach young men and women is eliminated.

What do you expect on this board? A lot of the people on it never played high school sports. Plus there's a large foreign contingent and I don't know that other schools officially sanction sports the way American high schools do.

I played high school sports, soccer specifically, and I can tell you the thousands of dollars that went into refurbishing the football/soccer/track field (which was not in bad shape anyways) could have easily gone towards books, computers, and other academic purposes.

[Trogdor]

I don't really get the whole stigma against high school sports. Is it cause of bad experience with jocks? I mean, if they wanna play sports while in high school, let them, barring stupid things like PE teachers earning way more than regular teachers of course.

I can't speak for everyone, but for me it was the pep rallies we had to attend before the football team had a big game. They were so fucking stupid, and they were mandatory because the adminstrators knew that no one would come if they were optional. I still remember having the cheerleaders throw really cheap candy into the audience, and getting some angry satisfaction by throwing back whatever I caught.

[Darth Wong]

Just a small trend on the board that has bothered me. It appeared in the education thread, but was such a wide tangent I couldn't address it without hijacking that thread. So, I put it here.

Basically, I'm noticing that a lot of people are dismissing high school sports as worthless money wasters. It doesn't have to be that way. Coaches can have a great impact on a struggling kid, and teach them character. The problem is not the sports, it is the sports out of control.

That's the tired old sales line that people have been pushing ever since the 1960s when governments and colleges started giving massive financial incentives for sports in inner-city neighbourhoods rather than academic achievement. Do you have any actual evidence for a causal connection between sports and better-behaved, higher-achieving students? Do you have any evidence that this policy has succeeded in improving those inner-city areas?

Sports can teach determination, commitment, teamwork and loyalty.

So can "World of Warcraft". That doesn't mean it belongs in school.

A good coach instill all these values and teach a kid how to develop these values and apply them to other things. I know that is how it works at my school. I was just hoping to say that high school sports have a great worth, and it will be a sad day when such a force for uniting and teach young men and women is eliminated.

Not if they get rid of these fucking idiotic college sports scholarships while they're at it. No inner-city kid should be allowed to think that sports is his ticket out of the ghetto; that is the dumbest fucking idea ever created, and it is fed and nourished by college sports scholarships and star treatment for high school athletes.

[Gil Hamilton]

We've been over this before, Spanky. Most big college athletic programs are funded primarily through alumni donations/ticket sales and they do not receive substantial amounts of funding from state governments. Furthermore, successful college athletic programs tend to bring national recognition to schools (Boston College is the traditional example) and by extension, more dollars.

As I was about to post, most college math and science programs don't bring in the multimillion dollar alumni donations. That's been known to happen due to a schools sports program*.

(*however, the biggest alumni donation I've ever heard about was at Carnegie Mellion University, where a man donated 250 million dollars to CMU. He was an economics student there and learned the skills which taught him to make well over a buh-buh-billion dollars. Needless to say, when CMU called him for alumni donations, he said "How much do you want?" and a couple years later there was an economics and business school named after the man within the university)

[Darth Wong]

I would also stress the fact that the vast majority of the student body at any given academic institution is not part of a sports team. The idea that sports teams will help kids is just one of the mindlessly repeated memes that simply doesn't stand up to scrutiny. The vast majority of kids lose interest in sports as they get older and the games become more competitive and stressful, not to mention the kids who are too short, or too ill-coordinated, etc. And even if this weren't the case, there are only so many kids one can realistically have on a competitive high school sports team anyway.

To make a school program which discriminates on the basis of athletic ability and then tout this as beneficial for the student body is utterly moronic. I would never advocate removal of PE class, but there's a difference between having PE class and having sports teams, sports scholarships, sports obsession, glorification of athletes, etc.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

Shit, it's college sports that are the real worthless money wasters...

We've been over this before, Spanky. Most big college athletic programs are funded primarily through alumni donations/ticket sales and they do not receive substantial amounts of funding from state governments. Furthermore, successful college athletic programs tend to bring national recognition to schools (Boston College is the traditional example) and by extension, more dollars.

Apologies.

[Durandal]

Sports can teach determination, commitment, teamwork and loyalty.

Oh please. I played soccer for 3 years and wrestled in high school. Guess what I learned about teamwork? Jack shit. I learned about teamwork through working on the stage for the school's theatre productions and eventually being the stage manager.

For the vast majority of people involved in them, team sports basically team one thing: That you have to learn to "take one for the team". I'm referring to all those second- and third-string players who rarely if ever ever get to play in an actual match. They learn that their responsibility is to serve as practice dummies and cheer from the bench for the first-string. Granted, that's simply a harsh reality of competitive sports, but it's not teaching any brand of teamwork that's useful in the real world.

When I ran the set building crew and the stage finally went up, it was something that everyone on the crew could be proud of. Part of that was because no one on the crew, including me, got any sort of public acknowledgment outside of our names in a pamphlet. There were no cheering crowds for the set crew. It was just us, looking at our stage and being proud of it. You don't get that same feeling playing team sports. That kind of teamwork has helped me.

[Metatwaddle]

I would also stress the fact that the vast majority of the student body at any given academic institution is not part of a sports team.

I wish that had been the case at my high school. We had to get physical education credits for two out of three trimesters in our freshman, sophomore and junior years, and one trimester in senior year. There were some ways to do this besides playing team sports, like taking health classes or doing a weight-room-for-credit program, but space in those classes was limited. (Weight room was pretty open when I was there, but now it's become harder to do that for a PE credit.) I played volleyball in my freshman and sophomore years and it was the biggest waste of my time in all of high school, with the possible exception of my freshman English class. Going to the weight room wasn't nearly as much of a strain on my time, and I was able to set my own goals instead of trying to compete. And speaking of competition, I think I spent more time competing with my teammates (even if it was just comparisons in my mind) than working with them.

[Dennis Toy]

I agree on the high school sports isn't jack shit. Back in high school when most of the building were crumbling, there were no books and there was no textbooks and the learning curriculum was shit. Also we didn't have much in the science and library department ( I went to high school in DC back in the mid-1990's when the city was bankrupt and in deep shit ) Guess what, the team got new uniforms, new equipment and got to go to out of town places while most of us who didn't have an interest in sports languished in classrooms without anything to do. They spent money that was allocated to the school on the team.

[Dennis Toy]

Not if they get rid of these fucking idiotic college sports scholarships while they're at it. No inner-city kid should be allowed to think that sports is his ticket out of the ghetto; that is the dumbest fucking idea ever created, and it is fed and nourished by college sports scholarships and star treatment for high school athletes.

Thats one of the main problems i have with education in the inner-city. Children are always told that the NBA or NFL is the way out of the ghetto and that they don't have to do anything worth a damn to try to get out. Why aren't anybody turning out engnieers, doctors or scientists? Where are our future technicians or researchers gonna come from? In the inner-city mentality, rapping and playing basketball is seemingly the only things that can get you success.

[theski]

Shit, it's college sports that are the real worthless money wasters...

We've been over this before, Spanky. Most big college athletic programs are funded primarily through alumni donations/ticket sales and they do not receive substantial amounts of funding from state governments. Furthermore, successful college athletic programs tend to bring national recognition to schools (Boston College is the traditional example) and by extension, more dollars.

Ding ding... and they fund other less money makeing programs...

[Ubiquitous]

Sports can teach determination, commitment, teamwork and loyalty.

Oh please. I played soccer for 3 years and wrestled in high school. Guess what I learned about teamwork? Jack shit. I learned about teamwork through working on the stage for the school's theatre productions and eventually being the stage manager.

How could you not learn teamwork from playing football for three years? You must have played for one really shitty team if that is the case!

Without teamwork, a football team simply cannot function properly, and I don't mean just on the pitch, either: it was our duty as a team to set up the pitch [corner flags, netting etc.] before the match, perform our team warmups properly [strikers working the goalkeepers, wingers exercising hamstrings, defenders on headers etc.] and, when we were in sixth form, make our own way to the opposition pitches [i.e. sorting out our own coaches or cars, directions etc.]. Our coaches sound quite shit compared to these $80000 ones that exist across the pond: we used to have a guy called Cleggy who came to train us in sixth form for £10 a session!

Obviously there is a great difference between America and Britain. I guess if I was American, I would be playing games in those insane stadiums in front of tens of thousands of people, rather than exposed pitches in front of around four detention students.

Playing sport was the main thing I looked forward to at school. I used to love playing softball and cricket, and the proudest moment of my sixth form life was helping the student team to victory over the teachers at cricket. Without sport to look forward to, school and sixth form would have been quite dull.

[Cairber]

I rowed for 9 years (4 in high school), and I absolutely loved our high school team. It kept me in great shape, I made tons of friends, I had to learn to schedule well...all that positive sports stuff. I liked the way our school handled sports; there was a complex grade/school performance policy that went with joining a sports team. I'm not going to be able to remember it all, but it involved teacher waivers, tutoring/extra work for first major GPA slip and leaving the team for a while for a second, suspensions for a certain number of demerits...it was long but effective.

Of course we were a private school and our coaches made chump change (my father was a coach in our brother school..he made about 1000 a year for it). Our crew coach made 1800....yet, we won every championship for many years.

[CarsonPalmer]

I'm not talking about sports obsessed schools. I specifically said that. In fact, the marjority of coaches I know of make nowhere near enough, as in barely survivable salaries. Salaries to the point that basic necessities are a stretch.
Jalinth, the coaches at my school all teach there, and in NJ, at public schools a head coach must be a certified teacher.
Durandal, again, the coaches I know of make very, very little.
PFC Brrungardt, that is wrong, and is again not the way it should be done. Done right, High School sports are great.
Mike, what about sports where there is a no-cut policy? I know that this is not possible in basketball, but in football, its not that hard to keep a lot of kids, and it is quite possible to put an emphasis on teaching.