My uncle, a former high school teacher, is known to say, “When I become King . . . . ,“ followed by some edict that could not be enforced because of our constitutional rights. Most of the time he is correct concerning the problem, but he suggests an unworkable solution. I have my own list of things I would do if I were King, and on the top of that list is getting rid of high school athletics.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not against children taking part in sports activities. I am opposed to the school being responsible for their organization and funding. Especially in these cash strapped times, money spent to pay a coach should be redirected to seeing that the advanced language teacher isn’t laid off or the Biology class size doesn’t rise to 40 in order to save money. Most serious high school athletes play club sports outside of school, so why duplicate costs by allowing schools to run programs as well.
Some would argue that club sports are expensive and that would price many deserving athletes out of the market. Schools, they would argue, allow everyone to take part in organized athletic activities at little or no cost to the parent. I would argue in response that they are wrong. Many club teams charge huge fees to take part, as high as $5000+ for some elite teams. When my daughter played club volleyball we paid about $1200 for the season, plus the cost of equipment and expenses when the team traveled out of town. At the time I was surprised to find out that some of the girls on her team paid nothing. These young women were extremely talented and were recruited by numerous teams, having all fees waived if they agreed to play for the club. The cost of this “scholarship” was paid for by the others who, because they lacked exceptional talent, had to pay to play. If your child has exceptional talent he or she can play for a club team at no cost to you; if not, try your local park district, or pay to join a club. Clubs recruit paying players by claiming that they will improve the child’s skills; while in reality they take the money and give special treatment and playing time to the elite members of the team.
My interest in writing about this topic today is because of a conversation I had with a student last week. The girl informed me that she would not be in school Friday because she was leaving town for a volleyball tournament. I asked which team she played for and we talked for about five minutes about her upcoming tournaments. I found out that the big national qualifying tournament was going to be on the weekend of Prom, and she expressed sadness that she would have to miss the dance because of her commitment to the team. I praised her for her loyalty to the club and asked if the team would be as loyal to her. She looked puzzled and asked what I meant. “Suppose a new girl moved into the area and joined the team” I asked, “and suppose she was a better player that you, or the coach thought she might be a better player, would you lose your starting position to her?” She agreed that she would lose her position if that happened. “That wouldn’t be very loyal to you would it?” I asked. She didn’t answer, but looked confused and uncomfortable. “Why would you be more loyal to the club than it would be to you?” were my final words to her before she made her way off to lunch.
If you go away with nothing else from this, remember that any coach on any level is only concerned with winning. Their loyalty to a player is based only on what that player can do for them, and lasts only as long as nobody else comes along who can do it better.
