It's interesting how over time things tend to change. Priorities shift, passions fade, or as it seems with a lot of people these days, things become too hard so they just give up. I've mentioned before that I work in the public school system, and as you probably know, we are no strangers to the occasional crisis.
While the threat of mass violence always seems to loom large these days, lately, the focus has been shifted to something some would argue is just as serious.
Let me get this out of the way first. I love sports, I occasionally play them, but I love watching them, and I fully appreciate that they have a place in society. However, I have always been opposed to the way they are elevated (especially at the grade school level) to the point that focus on other more important things is lost.
I encourage you to go to one of your local school board meetings for your public school district and keep track of how much time they spend talking about sports issues in the district versus other topics. You might have to go to a couple meetings to get a feel for it, but I wouldn't be surprised if you quickly see what I am talking about.
I often make the sarcastic comment that sports is the only reason any of us are here (meaning my colleagues). I've also heard the argument that sports is the single biggest intervention for keeping kids in school. Which is just a fancy way of saying, if sports was gone, kids would quit school. While I am not so sure about that, there has been a shift lately that has many people concerned.
I know of at least two or three school districts in our immediate vicinity this year that had to shutter some of their sports seasons due to not having enough kids to play on the team. In one case it was a boys soccer team, in another case it was a junior varsity football team, and then another district had to scuttle their junior varsity volleyball roster.
As you might imagine, this has administrators (not me) scurrying trying to figure out what is going on. One of the suggestions was that kids just aren't playing multiple sports like they used to. For example, @mrsbozz and I have nieces that played softball and basketball. It's not that the loved basketball, but they used it as a way to stay conditioned for softball season. These days, there are a wide selection of club sports that run year round, so if you are really interested in softball, you can find indoor leagues where you may never have to play another sport in the off season.
In the example above, that could leave a basketball team with a severe deficit in players. Thus scrapping the season.
I seem some valid points in that argument, but I also think it is something more than that. I think for the most part, kids just don't care as much about sports these days. Especially in some of those fringe areas where it is highly unlikely the student is ever going to advance to the pro level. Typically, those kids are taking private lessons and playing with club teams anyway.
I also think in bigger cities this is less of an issue due to the fact that you simply have a larger population to work with. A school district of 1200 student is going to have a much harder time filling rosters than a district with 4000 kids.
We've been seeing a large number of students move to virtual learning over the past couple of years. The reason is usually something vague like "anxiety" or something like that. When you only have 1200 students to begin with and then 1/4 of them aren't even physically attending school, that doesn't leave a very big talent pool to work with.
Does it ultimately hamper their ability to get an education (the real reason we are here), if they can't or don't play sports? Maybe, maybe not. I can see where some students might benefit from being part of a team. Many values and lessons they learn on the sports field could definitely be applied to other areas of their life.
The funny thing is, the adults are acting like this is some kind of nuclear event. There are calls to action, we need to brainstorm this, we need to fix this! What are we going to do about this! It's one of those cases where the adults have this vision of their team winning states or their kid being an all star that they just can't let go of. Those dreams will never come to be if there is no team to play on.
It seems this isn't isolated to just my area of the world either. Like I said, you probably don't see it in larger cities, but at the rural area we might be witnessing the death of high school sports. Some might argue it's actually the death of the American dream, but I'll let you be the judge of that.
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It is so interesting to see how much the landscape of school sports has shifted. A lot of factors are shaping students’ interests now, and it makes sense that traditional sports aren’t the automatic choice anymore. It doesn’t make the benefits any less valuable, but it does show how much schools need to adapt to what this generation actually connects with hehe
Yeah, I think we are still at the point where we are counting on sports to be the driving factor behind a lot of our decisions and that just isn't the case anymore. Sadly, I think people are so set in their ways that they aren't going to be able to make the shift.
It looks to me like there is a lot more money in school sports in the US than the UK. An upper school here will generally have a sports field with soccer and rugby pitches, but no tiered stands or stadiums. If less kids are playing then that may mean less funds will be available. It's terrible if kids are scared to go to school, but then you have so many serious incidents compared to other countries. I don't think there are simple answers for that.
I would probably agree with that. Some of the districts over here are basically like mini professional stadiums. It's kind of ridiculous. I think the mindset of younger generations is changing and the older generations have yet to catch up with it. At least when it comes to sports.
This is the first time I hear about this... Maybe because my son was never into sports and our daughter is definitely not into sports...
I only know what is happening locally, but I have a feeling it is happening across the nation. Maybe in small pockets.
Thats an interesting take. I can also see how priorities are shifting and fewer kids are joining school sports now.
Yes, that could be part of it too.
I imagine another reason is the rise of esports clubs. I was shocked when my son's cousin join an esports club at his middle school in Indiana. It seemed crazy to me. But I've since learned that esports is becoming pretty popular at many schools.
We have a couple Esports teams at our High School. It's pretty awesome. They are in their second or third year and they have made it to the state finals pretty much every year. There is some big scholarship money available in esports.
It's regrettable, and they don't realize how important sport and physical activity are for young people.
It is important, but you can still accomplish that without making it the primary focus.
Interesting, when I grew up all the way from kindergarten to leaving high school a big emphasis was placed on participating in sports and other extra curricular activities, now though that is not the case from what I see and hear. And the education system is in a far worse state now than it ever was. Then throw in the woke stuff that you cannot have a child winning because someone loses and this country is 🍌🍌🍌. The whole college sports scene that you have, we just cannot get our heads around.
Yeah, college sports are a whole different beast. Sadly most kids don't get the chance to play at that level. At least not with one of the power conference schools. Educators for the most part are not to blame. Our hands are tied by the politicians. I think a lot of people don't realize that. The parents are far worse than the school employees.
I agree that in smaller areas sports will begin to hurt more and more. Remote learning will become more and more the norm, which is fine academically. But unless the student has a burning desire to play sports there's not reason to go to school...
Good thing I am close to being able to retire I guess! :)
I'm all for supporting sports in schools.
Having said that, I think you can support sports without spending millions on fields and equipment.
You and me both! They wanted to buy a robot line painter for the football field this year. I just shook my head. Thankfully they decided against it (for now).
This whole situation is hitting my former high school hard. One of my old football coaches passed away and I went to a viewing for him and while talking to the current football coach / athletic director he said that only 3 freshmen came out for football. I was like WHATTTT??? 😳 Back when I played at that same school you would have 20 freshmen minimum.
I guess the problem is even worse with the girls sports. Low participation rates.
Also there are about half as many kids in the school that there was for the previous generation.
Like you mentioned kids will say they have "anxiety" and will be homeschooled or take classes online. It's weird stuff and I have seen a lot of weird things lately.
I guess 70% of the students at the school are in a single parent household.
I just think there is oftentimes no direction and you don't get the multiple siblings coming up through the system and the kid wanting to play ball like their big brother did.
Then they see they can get more attention and fame if they pretend to be a girl and dance around on TikTok.
I think some of these smalls schools might end up having to consolidate again. In the 60s the township schools consolidated and now they might have to consolidate further.
Yeah, back when I was in school and even when I started working here they often had varsity, junior varsity, and freshman team for many of the sports. There was just that much competition to want to play. It's bizarre. You might be right that smaller districts find themselves consolidating. The good news is in less than a year I can retire if I need to. That sounds like a mess I don't want to deal with!
There have been various talks out here for years to consolidate further. Some want it and some don't. Where a lot don't really want it is for basketball. They can all put together a basketball team and there are classes for basketball when way in the past when that first major consolidation happened there were no classes. That's why the movie Hoosiers was so significant. A tiny school taking on the big city schools to win the state championship.
I see both sides of it. Also another weird thing to me is while they are having a hard time getting kids now there are more sports like girls wrestling.
Yeah, that is a good point. I think it's just not as big of a deal to kids like it used to be. I would imagine there are a variety of reasons for that though some might want to point to a single thing. To me though the powers that be are trying to figure out what they can do to fix it when I think they should be changing the way they think about it.
I do think the specialization to just playing 1 sport earlier is a factor that you mentioned. I have seen a lot of burnout from kids doing that.
There are benefits to playing multiple sports, but sometimes kids spread themselves too thin or risk injury, though probably less than people think. Like I said though, I think they are banging this drum more for nostalgia sake than any other reason.