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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE-Dec. 11, 2002
Contact: John Johnson or Randy Allen
517.332.5046 or www.mhsaa.com
TV Event Misses The Point Of School Sports
ESPN2 is televising nationwide a high school basketball game
between an Ohio school with a player who is presumed to be jumping
from high school to the NBA and a Virginia school which follows
no rules and regulations but its own. And the promoters say this
is the wave of the future.
God help us!
For a century, high school sports have been an American tradition
unlike any place in the world: a time for schools and communities
to come together to cheer their friends and neighbors in cross-town
and cross-county rivalries.
Covered by local newspapers and radio, the focus has been on
education more than winning, on teams more than stars, and on
local rivalries and league titles more than state championships
and beyond.
It is a program that has as many participants and contests at
the subvarsity level as varsity level. It has been a pure, wholesome,
amateur, unsophisticated, even sometimes corny setting.
And if it tries to compete for the glitz and glamour of major
college and professional sports, it not only cannot win, it will
become spoiled, damaged goods - giving up its gentle spirit for
guile and greed.
The ESPN2 telecast is being described as a defining moment for
high school sports, using phrases such as "the quintessential
act of the way things will be in high school basketball . . .
a microcosm of the way basketball is moving into the future."
In fact, this event is an aberration in school sports, a wart
on the face of high school basketball.
There are promoters who consider this view out of date, who believe
this is "an avalanche that's moving down the mountain,"
a revealing choice of metaphor given that avalanches destroy
everything in their path.
High school athletics is indeed changing, but not nearly at the
pace of an avalanche and not necessarily for the good. Those
who care about a school sports program that serves all kinds
of students, male and female, tall and short, in many different
sports, in schools of all sizes, types and locales have other,
better plans for interscholastic athletics.
A generation or two of students from now, those who care about
broad and deep school sports programs, may not win the struggle
for the soul of school sports; but they are not going to be buried
anytime soon.
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