Student vs Athelete

Growing up in 1970s Seattle, soccer was king.  We played at the park, we played on the concrete playground at school, we played weekend games on crushed brick fields.  I played for eleven seasons with essentially the same neighborhood team.  Go Pounders!  The best team with the worst name.

I also played softball and basketball with my school teams and ran track.  It was just something you did, not because you were particularly good or even enjoyed it much.  To this day, my only memorable moment playing basketball was getting a technical foul for ripping the ball out of another player's hand (in my own defense, if the other girl had let go, it wouldn't have been a big deal-gawd). 

Here in Togiak, sports are the only after school activity there is.  No arts.  No jobs for the high schoolers.  No community center, though the Seventh Day Adventists do have a Teen Night once a week where they show movies and teach rudimentary cooking to any young person interesting in learning.  Mostly they go just for something to do, not out of any religious reason.

In the Fall, there is volleyball for girls (boys are allowed to play but they don't) and wrestling for boys middle school age and older.  To be on the team means travel.  Teams fly about every other week for weekend long tournaments to other villages like Twin Hills, Manakota and if they are lucky Dillingham where they get to buy Subway sandwiches for the first time in their lives.

But basketball is The Sport.  The reason is obvious; basketball is an indoor sport.  It doesn't matter how much snow or ice is on the ground outside.  At Thanksgiving, the middle school teams put on a tournament for kid and adult teams that was well attended but the adult teams showed such poor sportsmanship, they were disqualified from the tournament that was supposed to be held this weekend.

Supposed to be held, but was cancelled when only one team, made up of Fifth grade boys, signed up.  The high school girls have yet to field a team because there are so few girls and of those, all but four don't make the grade cut.

The middle school girl's team had their coach resign from coaching when the administration wouldn't support the academic contract she had the team sign.  It said that no player would travel for games if they were getting an F or a D in any subject, a regular clause in any sports team I know of in Oregon.  But the principal insisted that as long as a student had a 2 point grade point average, they were to be allowed to travel.  She quit rather than compromise and I immediately sent her an email of support.

Yes, athletics are important.  But school is more so.  What would we be teaching these kids if we told them outright, Oh yeah, grades aren't really anything to worry about, the game is more vital.