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Fracking in School Sports

May 1, 2015

First there were rumors, then there were reports, and now there are beginning to be results from geological surveys warning that the process of fracking in oil and gas exploration and deep ground extraction is increasing the frequency of earthquakes in several parts of the United States.

I want to say, “Duh! How could it not?” Why would it surprise any rational human being that the delicate blue marble we inhabit would not get off kilter when we bore deep into the surface with drills and explosive charges and then pump water at high pressure into the tunnels we create and the crevices we exploit? When I put that picture in my mind, I shudder.

Often I picture the world of school sports like this marble we inhabit. Sometimes I see exploiters drilling deep into our core, dropping explosives, applying pressure, and extracting what they believe are valuable resources while laying waste to everything else, including very much that is very precious to very many other people – in fact, to most athletes, coaches, administrators, officials, parents and spectators.

We should pay attention to the times when we feel our foundation shaking, even just a little. We should make it difficult for the exploiters to extract our elite, especially when they disregard and lay waste to everything else that holds our world – educational athletics – together.

Youth Should be Served

December 26, 2013

A half-century ago, youth sports were not well organized. Children directed most of their own games, playing each sport in its season, moving from touch football in the side yard to basketball in the driveway to baseball in the vacant lot where an apartment building now stands. They walked or rode their bikes to the venues, they brought their own equipment, they chose up sides and they agreed upon the playing rules and ground rules.

Even if young people played on a community team, they spent more time in pickup games on makeshift fields, courts and diamonds than they did in uniforms at the groomed settings of the formal youth league games.

Gradually, the leagues multiplied and the ability groupings stratified. Elite teams were created consisting of the more talented kids, who were really just more mature for their age; and they were provided with the most games, the longest trips and the largest trophies. It didn’t take long for the other players to feel second class and to drop out of one sport or all sports. In time, even some of the “good” players succumbed to overuse injuries and emotional burnout.

By the time most students reached the earliest grades for school sports, many had already found different ways to spend their time. It is often cited and well-documented that, today, 80 to 90 percent of all youth who ever started playing organized sports have stopped doing so by age 13. Before high school.

So it occurs to me that school districts should have both altruistic and selfish reasons to rethink their approach to junior high/middle school sports, which is now to engage students too late and offer them too little. Schools might be able to provide a better experience for the youngsters and create an earlier and stronger relationship with the philosophies of educational athletics at the junior high/middle school level, and that ultimately will strengthen high school athletic programs.

This pursuit will take great care in order to assure that schools themselves do not make the same mistakes we have seen in overzealous youth sports programs. We will have to find the balance where multi-sport experiences are encouraged so middle school students can experiment with new sports and discover what they might really like and be good at, while at the same time provide enough additional contests that interscholastic programs are a more attractive option than non-school programs that may always allow more contests than school people will allow within an educational setting.