“Well-Roundedness”
November 22, 2013
As high school seniors are scrambling to complete their college applications, I’ve reflected on how what is valued is changing.
I was accepted to both of the Ivy League schools to which I applied. This was at a time when evidence of being well-balanced, middle class and Midwestern were seen as strengths on an application. I don’t think I would be admitted to those institutions on the basis of those strengths today.
It appears that our so-called “elite” institutions are now looking for the outlier:
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Not participation in three different sports, each in its own season; but participation in one sport, year-around; and the more non-traditional the sport, the better.
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Not committed involvement in activities of the local school; but involvement away from school; maybe the invention of a product or electronic program or the founding of some nonprofit organization that improves the human condition of people in other places.
When we list all the factors that entice high school students to specialize in a single sport, we need to include that society today has made “well-roundedness” less worthy of praise than being “one-of-a-kind,” and that’s diminishing the value of being a team member unless one is the star on that team.
It is highly doubtful that either high schools or colleges are strengthened by these trends. More importantly, it is equally doubtful that single-focus childhood is the strongest way for young people to become good neighbors and community citizens.
What I continue to encourage for most students is that they sample the broad buffet of opportunities that a full-service school offers. To participate in both athletic and non-athletic activities. In both individual and team sports. To be a starter in one sport and a substitute in another. To participate in solo and ensemble. To be onstage and backstage. To taste winning and losing, and both in ample proportion.
Internal Medicine
March 20, 2018
When I express concerns for the health of high school basketball, I’m not confusing our problems with the corruption of major college men’s basketball that is under investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Yes, there are some tentacles that reach us, and taint us; but the problems that plague us most are more basic and local.
The concerns I have for high school basketball are captured in scenes that play out much too often across the membership of the Michigan High School Athletic Association. For example:
- Declining participation, with JV and varsity rosters too small to practice 5-on-5 at either level.
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Increasing forfeits.
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Ugly mismatches, with scores so lopsided that it is hard to imagine much teaching or learning can occur.
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Starters transferring; reserves dropping out.
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Confrontations between parents and coaches.
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Faculty coaches becoming a vanishing breed.
These kinds of concerns do not flow from the top down – we can’t blame these issues on the NCAA and NBA. No, our more persistent and perplexing problems percolate up from the youth level.
Often the students who come to our programs have participated in youth sports programs for five to 10 years before they join a school team. They arrive with expectations that often differ from what is intended for school-based programs. They’ve been in a different environment; they have different expectations.
And much of what is coming with youth sports begins to infect school sports.
There is no vaccination that will be 100 percent effective in immunizing us. There is no single solution that can quickly reverse these negative trends in school-based basketball and other school sports. The efforts must be systemic and long-term. And among the efforts that must be made are these
- More attention to coaches education – every coach, every year – where the ethics of educational athletics and the meaning of success in school sports provide the core of the curriculum; and
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More attention to junior high/middle schools – more opportunities for 6th- through 8th-graders to sample school sports and to savor an experience that puts team before individual and learning ahead of winning.