How to mess up high school sports, and families

Brad Schmidt’s Prep Wednesday article (catch it on The Oregonian‘s site before it disappears into the paid archives) reviews this year’s reorganization of high school sports leagues, from the perspective of Portland-area schools. Cleveland did well from competing with smaller schools; Franklin chose to stay in their historic league with bigger schools, and struggled. But to me, the real heart of the issue is covered in the Eugene Register-Guard on 1/20/07. There, a sports coach notes his team now has a six-hour, 340 mile round trip to play regular season games in Medford. “When I’ve got kids coming home at 3 o’clock in the morning and having to get up at 7 o’clock in the morning to get to school, there’s something wrong with that,” he said. No kidding.

I’m so glad my football/basketball/tennis-playing sons graduated from Wilson High School before the Oregon Schools Athletics Association (OSAA) did their best to take the fun out of interscholastic sports, and that my former-swimmer daughter now chooses to exercise her competitive urges by auditioning for parts in dramatic stage productions. The OSAA could hardly have done a better job of destroying the spirit of high school sports if they had actually been trying to.

Here’s how to mess up high school sports in Oregon:

1. Forget that high school students need to graduate. So what if they have to take trips of three hours each way to get to regular season sports matches? Being “fair” in leveling sporting ability is far more important than being “fair” in giving students an hour or two to study in the evening.

2. Place teams in leagues based on size of school. Everyone knows athletic talent is entirely based on averages – more kids to choose from, more of them will be good. And want to play. And have great coaches and adequate funding. It’s simple math. Ask Central Catholic or Jesuit. Oh wait, they are smaller schools choosing to play in leagues with larger schools. Never mind. Ask Cleveland!

3. Ancient rivalries? Schools within a district playing each other in league matches? Pshaw. So what if people who grew up in a city remember the rivalry games of their youth. Times change. Having only four other teams in your league increases your chances of making the playoffs, even if you then get crushed immediately. Don’t you see how this works?

4. Don’t worry if some large schools actually aren’t that successful in sports – don’t let the facts get in the way of the plan. Ignore examples of schools not doing well one year, being wildly successful a few years later. Getting hammered by greatly superior teams builds character – “that which does not kill us makes us stronger”. Even if it happens week after week, year after year, sport after sport. Avoiding teams formerly a challenge is good, too – it prevents those regular-season close-calls which can make the playoff seeding so much less predictable.

5. Be sure to give the impression that this was a plan devised and supported primarily by Portland/Metro-area coaches, students, and parents, to make certain resentment by the rest of the state is maximized.

Enough of the sarcasm – clearly, some organizers have forgotten that high school sports are supposed to be giving kids an incentive to stay in school, not decreasing their love of sports and ability to pass classes and graduate.

The State Board of Education is considering changes to the rules, requiring the OSAA to put safety, academics and cost issues first when making changes to sports leagues. They now consider those factors along with six other criteria, including school size and competitive equity. State Superintendent of Schools Susan Castillo claimed last year she lacked authority to block the changes, and proposed changes to the Legislature. Proposed amendments would also require majority approval of reclassification by the schools in each division, and that all schools in a single district must be in the same division unless the district school board agrees to a different assignment.

Duh.