Wake up high school athletes. You’re being used.
You can’t use cell phones in school. But schools can use you to fill up their pocketbooks with ducats. Yeah, nice lesson there.
At Waynesboro, you can’t walk around at football games. The administrators in Giantdom would rather let a few rotten apples spoil the whole darn pie and, in an effort to make their jobs of policing you easier, they force you to sit in the stands. An announcement made over the PA system at the football field repeats this rule to the point of hysterics. But schools can walk four extra state champs to the podium because it brings in more money. Again, good lesson there.
They want to award more state titles, but since sports like soccer, tennis, golf, volleyball, baseball, softball, cross country and so on and so forth, don’t bring in the bucks, they only add those other state titles to the sports that do. That’s why Group A and AA basketball are now split into divisions like football. The whole money issue is why sports like soccer, tennis and the like don’t get the same benefit.
Yep, it’s adults ruining high school sports again, an all too familiar refrain around the country that has the few, unlike those in charge of schools, that haven’t forgotten what it’s like to be in high school, shaking our heads. Surely adults know how to do things better, right? I mean, look at the state of our country, look at what you’re paying for gas whenever mom and pops let you borrow the car. If you follow the political news (and if you don’t, we don’t blame you), take long hard look, high school kids, at the recent bruhaha regarding the Augusta GOP. Yeah, this is mature.
But hey, you’re a high school kid which means it’s all your fault and adults know better.
Time to wake up high school athletes. You’re getting used. Totally used. Instead of a face that represents the community on the hardwood or the gridiron, you’re now just another dollar sign. How else can you explain Group A and AA’s decisions? You can’t tell me they’re looking out for you. You can’t tell me they want you to be happy because you, yes you, the student wants more state titles. We got this feeling that you don’t give a rat’s furry behind about a better chance at winning a state title.
Heck, we’re pretty sure you’d like to win one the old fashioned way and earn it, right? You know, just like your big brother or sister did.
While coaches, media types and administrators haggle back and forth over the recent splitting of the groups, do you really care? You should, because you’re more than a just a dollar sign. You’re the backbone of the community and, excuse the cheesiness, you are the future. They say oppression breeds violence, in this case watching “adults” do stupid things should breed smarts in you.
Let’s take a look at dumb adult actions of of late (because you know those old folks are always quick to point out what you “darn kids” do wrong and, well, that’s just not fair either). BTW, dumb adult actions usually is redundant:
2. This lame split.
3. This lame split for only the money sports.
So not only do they want to use you for money (which, again, they are), they don’t want to give everybody a fair shake. Like I said in my print column today, the split is dumb, but it’s here and, my guess is, it isn’t going anywhere until the Virginia High School League takes a long, hard look at the four-A system it could go to in the 2011-12 cycle. Then, and only then, will the problem be solved. Until then, we’ll have to wait and tennis players, soccer players, baseball players and the rest that can’t hit an outside shot or run for 15 yards up the middle will have to live as sports unworthy of an extra state title.
The biggest joke of the split isn’t the easier road to a state championship or teams that don’t deserve the make the postseason getting a shot. Don’t be fooled by those who drink champagne with high school coaches, that’s not the case. The biggest joke—the biggest injustice actually—of this whole thing is the inequality.
Why just basketball and football? (We already know that answer, however. Cha-ching!) The right thing to do would have been to wait until the four-A system to make any changes. But last year Group A basketball didn’t want to wait and Group AA saw the dollar signs. The right way to fix this wrong is to split all the sports and give everybody the same chance to win a state title.
The right way to fix things is to stop using high school athletes for money. But, then again, aren’t adults always right?
And another thing: When Andrew Quesenbery scored his lone JV soccer goal of the season mere hours after his grandmother, Granny Q, died, he waited until the match was over to let his emotions out. You know who surrounded the 16-year-old when he fell to his knees after the game and cried? Nope, not a single adult ran out of the stands. It was his team, yep, the rest of the Little Giants, that surrounded him, lifted him off the ground and chanted his name.
Wow, kids taking care of themselves on the field of play.
Leave them alone out there, adults. They’re doing OK, and certainly shouldn’t be used for money.
