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IN THIS ISSUE: FRONT ROW Youth- and School-Based Sports: SIDELINES Announcements
FRONT ROW YOUTH- AND SCHOOL-BASED SPORTS Looking for a Good AD Role Model? An article by Jay Rowles in the South Jersey Local News caught our eye recently. It was a profile of Kevin Murphy, athletic director of Washington Township High School in Gloucester County, New Jersey. His words and philosophy, as well as those of football coach Mark Wechter, will lift the spirits of anyone involved in youth sports. • Murphy: “[The athletic program is] the classroom after three o’clock. I view myself as an educator first. When you’re working with young people, you’re helping them achieve their goals and dreams.” • Murphy: “What we want our kids to understand is that [the playing field] is an extension of the classroom: ‘What can I get from this participation that can help me as a young adult as I move on to the next stage of my life?’” • Murphy: “Athletics is a very emotionally charged environment, and we try to help them understand that it’s a part of their growth process and their development as young adults.” • Wechter: “It’s not a win-at-all-costs mentality. It’s do the right things and good things will happen.” • Wechter: “We know if we do the right things with the kids that Kevin will recognize that over the wins.” • Wechter: “If a kid’s not behaving correctly in the classroom or not getting things done academically, he’s going to sit on the bench. With Kevin setting that philosophy, we feel better when we do win knowing we did right by the kids overall.” Although the school emphasizes character and education over winning, Washington Township excels in both. Its teams win 75 percent of the time, earning seven conference championships and five county titles. But most important, it scored a 100 percent sportsmanship rating last year. [southjerseylocalnews.com, 7/30/08]
A new interactive video program educating high school students on the dangers of steroids and sports supplements has reduced the use of steroids and recreational drugs and improved nutrition. Sponsored by a $1.4 million grant from the NFL and the NFL Players Association, the NFL ATLAS (for male student-athletes) and NFL ATHENA (for female student-athletes) programs consist of 45-minute sessions with students led by a student-athlete squad leader. An estimated 36,000 students will attend the sessions this year, and the program will be substantially expanded next year. What aren’t working are steroid screening programs. USA Today reports that the University Interscholastic League in Texas – the largest (30,000 student-athletes) and most expensive ($6 million over two years) high school steroids-testing program in the nation – bans 36 steroids but only tests for ten. What’s worse, of the more than 10,000 tests conducted so far, only two have come back positive. “There’s no need to spend taxpayer dollars on this,” fumed one Texas lawmaker. This year New Jersey and Illinois will test for all known steroids plus stimulants and diuretics, which can mask steroids. The problem is, only one student tested positive out of their first 500 tests, prompting critics to question its cost-effectiveness as well. When similarly dismal results occurred in Florida (one positive result out of 600 tests), the state dumped its $100,000 program. [USA Today, 8/21/08, 8/27/08]
The only spell-out that parents and spectators have been doing at two Texas high schools lately is “H-U-H?”
• LBJ High School teachers thought designing a ghoulish T-shirt might help spark school spirit before its Halloween night game with rival Reagan High School in Austin. How ghoulish? The shirt depicted the LBJ jaguar as the Grim Reaper holding a bloody sword over a decapitated Reagan raider lying in a pool of blood with the caption: “Death Comes for Everyone.” Principal Patrick Patterson enthusiastically approved the T-shirt. “Within the context of Halloween, it was easy for me to approve because it was pretty cute and clever.” After an outcry by parents, the caption and blood were removed and the mascot’s head was reattached. “I wouldn’t have changed it at all,” Patterson grumbled afterward, “but I realize this is not the Patrick Patterson Independent School District.” • A common skit at pep rallies is for the school mascot to be kidnapped by the rival school, and the cheerleaders run in and rescue it. Nacogdoches High School took that theme one step – or maybe several – further.
After freeing their mascot, the cheerleaders forced the kidnappers to kneel with their hands behind their backs. Then they pulled out guns and “shot” them execution style. Pulling the corpses into a pile, they danced on their graves and threw money in the air. Principal Nathan Chaddick said afterward, “They were doing a little country, cowboy-type skit. What do they want us to do with Shakespeare when kids have swords stabbing each other or plays with some shooting? It’s the same thing.” More than 100 students signed a petition protesting the skit. When two wrote an editorial in the school paper denouncing it, Chaddick edited out all paragraphs that questioned the administration’s support for it. [badjocks.com; keyetv.com, 10/10/08]
Will the NFL Ever Put a Bounty In 2007, the minimum wage for rookies and first-year pro football players was $285,000 (tack on approximately $80,000 for each succeeding year). Well, how’s anyone supposed to live off that? They need ways to earn extra cash. Fortunately, a common, but illegal, football tradition allows them to do that. They collect bounties on opposing players. Tackle a kickoff receiver inside the 20, hold a star running back under 100 yards, or knock a quarterback out of the game and you may find an envelope filled with cash in your locker Monday morning. Only rule is: no cheap shots. You don’t want anyone carted off on the back of the John Deere. League rules prohibit teams and players from “offering or accepting bonuses to a player for his or his team’s performance against a particular team, a player or players, or a group of an opposing team.” The practice is so secret and hard to detect, though, that the violation is practically impossible to enforce. Last month, Baltimore Ravens linebacker Terrell Suggs told a radio show he and his teammates placed a bounty on two Pittsburgh Steelers players: Rashard Mendenhall and Hines Ward. Mendenhall was knocked out for the season with a broken shoulder. Former Ravens coach Brian Billick said Suggs’s offense was making the bounty public, not setting it. According to DanPatrick.com, “Billick says every team does things like bounties in their locker room. They just should never talk about it publicly.” On Nationalfootballpost.com, former NFL player Matt Bowen wrote: “I’ve been in meeting rooms in the NFL or in the hotel on Saturday nights when it was talked about. I would be lying if I didn’t admit I went after a guy or two in my career. Does that make me a dirty player? I highly doubt it. If you can knock a guy out of the game and that helps you win, I don’t see the problem. This isn’t a new revelation. It happens every Sunday.” [sportingnews.com, 11/20/08; scrippsnews.net, 10/23/08; nationalfootballpost.com, 10/23/08]
Racial Slurs Forfeit Game An alleged incident at a high school girl’s junior varsity soccer game in southern New York has mushroomed into what may become a litmus test on “he said, she said” racial perceptions. The game between Vestal and Horseheads at the Vestal stadium was already ugly in terms of rough play – six players on Vestal were injured including one concussion – but it got uglier when a Vestal spectator allegedly shouted the n-word at two black Horseheads players. When the taunting continued, causing one of the girls to break down, both girls’ parents protested to their coach and one walked to the sidelines to demand the referees do something about the crowd. When nothing was done, the Horseheads team walked off the field in protest, forfeiting the game. Vestal spectators allegedly cheered as the team left and taunted it with racial epithets in the parking lot. “Our girls were inconsolable,” one of the Horseheads parents told The Ithica Journal. “They could not believe an adult could say something like that to a child.” Both schools conducted investigations, and that’s when the controversy really heated up. Horseheads’s inquiry found that slurs were made deliberately to their players. Vestal’s review found no evidence. This was odd because fans for both teams sat on the same side of the bleachers. One African American Vestal parent in the crowd didn’t hear any racial comments. “The thought that our community would sit in the midst of someone yelling continuous racial slurs without a reaction from those around them,” he told the paper, “must have infuriated those [from Horseheads] when, in fact, those of us who are used to hearing those nicknames could easily determine what they were.” The superintendent of the Horseheads Central School District has asked for an independent investigation by the Southern Tier Athletic Association because of the “clear differences” in the two schools’ reports. [theithacajournal.com, 10/7/08, 10/11/08]
When New Berlin Eisenhower High School’s JV football team arrived for the game with its Wisconsin rival, the locker room was inadvertently locked. At halftime, believing the restrooms were still closed (they weren’t), some of the players and coaches relieved themselves on the outskirts of the playing field in full view of the fans.
The stunned spectators from – we’re not making this up – Pewaukee felt the visitors were purposely disrespecting their home field, and the public-address announcer admonished them: “Coach, we do have facilities for your players to use.” Afterward, the players involved were disciplined and the coaches were suspended for one game. “It showed incredibly poor judgment,” said district superintendent Paul Kreutzer. “But I don’t think it was a matter of intentional exposure; it was a matter of intentional relief.” [jsonline.com, 10/15/08; 620wtmj.com, 10/15/08; deadspin.com, 10/17/08]
Team Designs Play for Devoted Player Although senior Wade Ackerson showed up at 6:30 a.m. four days a week for weight training during the summer and runs with the Fruitport High School football team in Michigan, he can’t play for the school.
After his uncle gave him permission to play and he passed a physical, Wade began practicing with the team, which designed a play for him called “The Wade Wedge.” On game day, Wade’s name was called in the third quarter on a two-point conversion. Lining up next to the quarterback, he got the ball. The offensive line did the rest, surging through the opponents to allow Wade, just 5’2” and 116 pounds, to slip into the end zone. [grandhaventribune.com, 10/14/08]
When head linesman Bruce Breegle took the field on the visiting high school team’s sideline in a game between host Chipley and visitor Northview in September, he didn’t know what to expect. “You always wonder what the head coach on your sideline is going to be like,” he wrote afterward in a letter to the Florida High School Athletic Association. “Sometimes you arrive with trepidation and sometimes you look forward to seeing him. I had never met this coach before.” The coach was Cody Keene, and the impression he left with the official would not be forgotten. “This coach was a gentleman the entire game. He always addressed me as ‘Sir.’ Coaches don’t ever call me ‘Sir.’ When he did question what a penalty was, he was extremely polite and acted if he was really asking to learn. He was never critical or demeaning and always pleasant. “This was one of the most enjoyable experiences of my 30-year officiating career in high school sports. I do not know how many of these reports it takes for a school to be recognized, but this would be my pick for a sportsmanship award for the year.” It was enough. The FHSAA recognized Keene for “exceptional sportsmanship.” [northescambia.com, 9/23/08]
College coaches and Major League Baseball scouts flocked to West Salem and Oak Creek high schools’ quarterfinal game at the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association state tournament to see Oak Creek’s phenom pitcher Eric Semmelhack. West Salem lost 6-5 after leading by three runs in the final inning. Afterward, coach Chuck Ihle found a letter in his mailbox from a scout for the Los Angeles Dodgers who had attended the game. Here is some of what he wrote: “When all did not go well down the stretch, not one member showed any frustration at any of the events. Our group also observed such positive attitudes of all your supporters that night. They conducted themselves in a positive way throughout the entire game. “We wondered who was responsible for making every one of us so proud of this action. We came to the conclusion that there are many people in the school who have played a major role, from the administration to the coaches to the parents and also the student leaders. You proved to all the people at the tournament that West Salem can be a real role model for schools in the state of Wisconsin.” That scout had a sharp eye. West Salem won the WIAA Sportsmanship Award this year. [couleenews.com, 8/28/08]
Practice helps student-athletes improve their teamwork. But practicing with the opposing team? Cross-country coach Marcus Dunbar of Kodiak High School in Alaska believes that befriending one’s opponents before races is the honorable thing to do. “It’s making friendships that will last a lifetime,” he told the Kodiak Daily Mirror. “As opposed to, ‘Yeah, I ran against that kid in high school and never talked to him.” Not only does Dunbar have them run together, but he divides them into groups and has them complete certain tasks during their run. Afterward, he tests them on Olympics history. The overall experience can be a powerful lesson. “We want to win and want to beat them in the race, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be friends.” [kodiakdailymirror.com, 8/29/08]
A Utah fan sent this message to the University of Maryland in care of the Ann Arbor News: “I just got back from visiting your stadium and your fair state. Thank you for being so hospitable! Five friends came to watch the game and cheer on our team. The fans in Section 15 were very generous and showed good sportsmanship. “Thanks for the kindnesses shown. I hope someday you will come visit us and that we can show you as much Western hospitality as you showed us of Midwestern hospitality. You have the best fans I’ve ever met in any stadium.” [blog.mlive.com, 9/8/08]
During a gripping volleyball league match between Gunn and Palo Alto high schools in central California last month, the match was tied at two games apiece. In the third game, Gunn had the momentum and jumped out to a 7-3 lead when the score table lost track of Gunn’s service rotation. Gunn’s coach, Raudy Perez, went over and admitted the rotation error and said his opponent, Palo Alto, should be awarded a side out and a point. “This was a true display of sportsmanship during an intense match,” Palo Alto’s coach Dave Winn wrote to the California Interscholastic Federation’s Pursuing Victory With Honor website afterward. “It was clear that Raudy was focused on setting a good example for his team.” Palo Alto eked out a 25-22 win in that game and clinched the match with a 26-24 nail-biter in the fourth. But it was Perez who prevailed with his unselfish display of respect.
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Wade, the team’s manager, has cerebral palsy and lost both his mother and father in just the last few years. He’s currently living with an uncle, but his real family is the Trojan squad. Coach Steve Wilson wanted to reward Wade for his devotion and promised to get him into the game on senior night.
• Richard J. Riordan served two terms as mayor of Los Angeles from 1993 to 2001. 
• Darline P. Robles, Ph.D., is the Los Angeles County Superintendent of Schools. 
