School officials need to make adjustments in conference alignment/schedules so that teams can compete.
Years ago, I covered high school sports for a small-town newspaper. It was in my hometown and for my school, and I remember writing a lot of stories about losing.
Courtesy: thechiefnews.com
We’d point to athletic reasons for losing, things like ‘We look small!’ and ‘Wow! That team is really good!’ Never, ever did we frame losing as a structural issue, that is, we had no real chance of winning consistently for non-athletic reasons.
But, today, there’s something to be said about ‘that structural thing.” Just pay attention to what’s happening around the country. Earlier this year, The National Federation of State High School Associations expressed the need for competitive balance in high school athletic systems across the country. NFHS reported that actions to improve competitive balance are being initiated in states as far-flung as Oregon and Illinois.
Pennsylvania may be leading the way. Over 150 Keystone State high schools met last year to discuss the problem and, later, adopted a new ‘competitive-based’ system for classifying high schools. No longer is school size and proximate location the only criteria used to group schools.
The problem is clear. Year after year, winning is a real challenge for some schools, but not for other schools. Sometimes it’s in one sport only, but it’s often across sports.
You have blowout wins, dominating teams, and superior athletes, on the one hand, and winless seasons, losing streaks, and scoring droughts on the other.
But something interesting happens when persistently dominated teams play schools that are ‘more like them.’ They may not win consistently, but the games are more competitive. The final football score goes from something 42-14 to 28-21–closer games, more competitive contests.
So there IS something to ‘this structural thing,’ and that’s why I took note recently when a headline came across my desk. It was from The New York Times, “Poor schools keep getting crushed in football. Is it time to level the playing field?”
Hoover High (IA) has trouble competing with suburban teams (photo, WHO-TV.com)
Reporter Timothy Williams tells the story about the situation in Iowa. It’s a severe disconnect between what amounts to a football equivalent of a ‘Tale of Two Cities’–the Des Moines’ suburbs vis-à-vis Des Moines city, Hoover High, specifically. City schools have a combined record of 0-104 against suburban teams, Williams’ reports. Ouch!
What’s at play? In the Iowa case, it’s resources. In the suburbs, sports are supported by a level of resources unavailable to the city’s public high schools, like Hoover. Williams attended a game where he saw a suburban school unload video equipment so that coaches could follow the game via technology, analyze plays, and make game adjustments in real-time. The city school on the other side of the field had none of that equipment available. The suburban team won that night, 35-7.
Williams notes that the issue is getting press and public attention in Iowa. He cited a recent article published in the Des Moines Register entitled, “Iowa high school sports: should poverty be used as a measure of fairness in determining opponents?”
Is it just a matter of money? Socio-economic profile of communities? The racial composition of teams? Sometimes it’s one of those factors. Sometimes it’s a combination of things. And sometimes it’s something else, like the introduction (even proliferation) of athletics-focused charter schools and/or liberal high school transfer policies.
But no matter the cause or causes, the outcome is the same–competitive imbalance. Take, for example, schools that are loaded with aspiring college athletes. They toy with nearby opponents, schools that don’t have a similarly constituted pool of athletes. Sometimes the dominant team is a city school. At other times it’s a private school. Things got so bad in the Baltimore area recently that fellow conference schools declared that they would stop playing St. Francis Academy in football, a squad that had whipped the competition by an aggregate score of 532-69.
Home soccer team gets blown out (photo, LoHud.com)
Here’s the thing. In some places, we know there is a competitive imbalance. It’s right before our eyes. One solution is to reconfigure conferences/athletic schedules so that competitively similar teams play consistently.
But while that may seem to be an obvious solution, it doesn’t align with the conventional mindset–either administratively or in the public. School size and proximate location prevail in establishing conference alignments. Change comes hard for a variety of reasons, including ego. Plus, fans don’t always fancy having a variable like ‘competitively similar’ outweighing ‘let’s just play each other unrestrained.’
But my counter-argument is that reasonableness matters. If and when competitive imbalance persists, why not adjust? I feel for players who are beaten game after game and week after week. And what about school pride/morale when teams lose season after season—not just by a little, but by a lot?
I see the effort that high school athletes put into preparing for and playing games. They want to have fun playing their sport, and they want to experience the thrill of winning, too.
Losing consistently exacts a heavy price,–psychologically in players and socio-culturally at schools and in communities. Nobody wants to lose consistently or, worse yet, to think of themselves or be perceived as ‘losers.’
When high schools can’t compete athletically, authorities need to make adjustments in conference alignments and schedules–just as Pennsylvania did. Do it for the kids.
By the way, Hoover High (IA) lost last night to suburban Ankeny High, 63-0.
You nailed another one ! Thanks for turning your spotlight on an issue that deserves our attention.
This is an issue that needs our attention. Well done!