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High school athletes should concentrate on having fun**
My first reaction was that the article seemed out of place. I mean, what was a story on high school football doing on page A3 of Sunday's Washington Post? I flipped the paper to the front, to make sure I wasn't reading the sports. Unfortunately, I wasn't.
OK, so this wasn't just any article on high school football. No, this story was about high school football at San Angelo Central High School in West Texas, where a quarterback controversy had arisen. The former starter was black. The new starter was white.
It's hard to imagine high school sports plagued by racism. Or by any problems. High school sports are supposed to be safe from the trials and tribulations that haunt both college and professional athletics. No talk of salary caps, labor negotiations or strikes. No recruiting violations. Just a bunch of teenagers playing sports for the reason they were meant to be played--for fun.
That's what we're supposed to believe. But that's not the case. Definitely not in West Texas. As the father of the new starting quarterback told the Post, "I think that generally coaches are going to do what they think is best for the team's chances to win." Granted, San Angelo has not won a game this season. But it's the overall attitude of high school football in West Texas and other places that sends a negative message. Seems as if the saying, it's not how you win or lose, it's how you play the game, has been replaced by "Just win, baby," the motto of controversial Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis.
In many other ways, high school sports have become corrupted by their professional counterparts. Now, instead of just recruiting for colleges, scouts are out on the playground recruiting for high schools. Of course, they don't call themselves recruiters--that would violate the rules of high school athletics.
Instead, they are persuaders, telling 13-year-olds of the future they could have playing at Big Time High School. "Come here," they say, "and you can be a star."
Sometimes star basketball players will transfer not just from one school to another in the same city, but they will move to a different state in order to get national exposure. Kevin Garnett--the 19-year-old wonderkid who was recently picked fifth in the NBA draft--pulled that trick his senior year, moving from a rural town in South Carolina to a big-time basketball school in Chicago. The move meant more national exposure to both college and NBA recruiters. Be true to your school? It's more like be true to yourself.
Even the shoe companies have become involved in the high-stakes game at the high school ranks. Some high school coaches will sign a contract with a certain company. And let's just say College A has a deal with the same company. Come spring, the big-time high school star just happens to sign with College A. Coincidence? I think not.
Modern high school sports are no longer the community builders that they once were. A few years ago, Hollywood reminded sports fans across the nation what high school athletics were all about. The movie "Hoosiers" is the ultimate feel-good movie--the small town, rural high school team beats the odds and defeats the big boys from the city. If you remember, Hickory had only six players on the varsity team. But what those boys did on the court not only affected themselves, but brought together an entire town.
What makes "Hoosiers" even more unique was the movie ended where it began, in the Hickory gym. There was no mention of the players going off to play college ball. They were just players who loved the game, and wanted to represent their school.
That small-town feeling still exists today, right here in North Carolina. Two Fridays ago, I visited the town of Creedmoor, about 20 minutes from Durham. I was there as a correspondent for the Herald-Sun, covering a game between South Granville High School and Princeton High School.
I felt like I had gone through a time warp and entered rural America. The first shocking observation was that the total number of players for both teams equaled 32. Fans on the South Granville talked not only about the varsity game, but the previous night's junior varsity match-up, a game many of them attended. There was no press box, and the "play-by-play" man added facts like "Joey there is in my Physics class."
While to the modern sports fan, South Granville would be a nightmare, it reminds you that there is a lot more to sports than just winning the football game. In the end, South Granville was destroyed on its own turf, 36-6. But the outcome wasn't the point. What was the point was that for most--if not all--of the players on the field, high school football was as far as they would advance on the gridiron latter. So why play? For the fun.
This past summer, I saw the future of high school sports in a 13-year-old basketball player named Otis. Otis could do it all--dribble behind his back, make no-look passes. It's obvious Otis has skills.
But as Otis works to get better on the court, his future is already being planned off the court. He already stars for his local AAU team, and no doubt will soon be running the show as the point guard in high school. True, basketball may be Otis' path to college. But I hope he doesn't forget, among all the hoopla, the reason he goes to play at the YMCA every Saturday--because he loves the game.
John Seelke is a Trinity senior and associate sports editor of The Chronicle.
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