Kansas Wrestling Forums General Discussion High School Academics and athletics article - FYI

High School Sports
The Downside of Athletic Programs Destroys Academic Balance
© Michael Streich

May 1, 2009
High school athletic programs should be treated as a necessary and vital part of the education process, but not at the expense of academic standards and expectations.

Athletics have always been an integral part of the secondary school experience. Over the last decades, high schools have added new sports, like lacrosse, and vastly increased others. In some cases, both parents and students make important decisions about where to attend solely on the basis of athletic considerations. To what extent have sports lost the balance between academics and athletic prowess? How does an athletic program impact the so-called “other wing” of the campus?

The Downside of Large Athletic Programs
As Athletic Directors add more non-conference games, participating students often find themselves unable to adequately fulfill academic course requirements. It is not uncommon for coaches to counsel key athletes to drop elective classes, even if those classes may significantly affect the college application process.

Many school teams must travel great distances for their competitions, resulting in students getting home at very late hours, yet they are still required to complete homework or other academically-related assignments. The notion that students can complete such work while on a long bus ride is hollow: few students have the self-discipline to devote quality time to studies amidst lively team members.

Relentless practices that usually begin with the final school bell prohibit students from seeking after school academic help or clarification. Even if coaches acquiesce, the athletes are typically “benched” or forced to run punishment laps. Sports are a serious high school business that frequently includes weekend practices or invitational competitions.

The Risk of Injury
Expanded practices (including summer camps) and greater rigor have proven to increase the risk of student injuries. According to the CDC, the High School Sports-Related Injury Surveillance Study (monitoring the 2005-2006 school year) confirmed the negatives trends. The CDC reports that, “High school athletes account for an estimated 2 million injuries, 500,000 doctor visits, and 30,000 hospitalizations annually.”

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The highest percentage of injuries were found in high school boys football and wrestling. In a June 1997 report issued by the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine, of 458 male wrestlers tracked in 14 high schools, there were 219 injuries in 418 wrestlers. The “overall injury incidence” was 52 injuries per 100 wrestlers. Interestingly, “hard wrestling during practice and the takedown position resulted in the highest occurrence of injury.” A final result of the study disclosed that “the older and more experienced wrestler may be at greater risk of injury.”

A study completed by Children’s Hospital in Boston on children aged five to fourteen disclosed that “sports…contribute to approximately 21 percent of all traumatic brain injuries among American students and adolescents.” The Boston study, it should be noted, looked at many factors including non-school recreational activities such as snowboarding and skateboarding.

Finding the Appropriate Balance
The educational process has always included athletics and such competition was encouraged as part of a total package of broad learning and experience. Every ancient culture that valued education, such as the Greeks, for example, prized athleticism as a vital part of social expectations.

School sports today can be the ticket to tuition-free college, or at the very least, a more affordable financial aid package. But the percentages of students benefiting from this are usually very low. Sports also add prestige to a school, instilling a sense of pride and building positive school spirit. Clearly, there is a role for athletics.

That role, however, must be tempered as a partnership within the overall task of academic standards and expectations. Too many late nights at distant fields may negatively affect academic performance levels. Inordinate practice sessions may needlessly impact student studies as well as the ability to facilitate and participate in other activities such as student clubs or community service projects. Administrators and parents need to work with coaches to establish this equilibrium.



Read more: http://high-school-culture.suite101.com/article.cfm/high_school_sports#ixzz0NRE5CVMo

This author does a poor job presenting a balanced view of the role athletics plays in the educational process. This is a classic example of what I try to teach my students to look for in reading an article, especially one that cites statistics. The statistics that are quoted are poor at best. They do not show whether the incidence of injury is increasing, decreasing, or remaining level. He does not state how many nonathletic related injuries, doctors visits, and hospitalizations occur for nonathletes. It would be interesting to see how much higher the incident of injury is for an athlete at practice as opposed to an individual racing out of the school parking lot in their car, or riding a skateboard at the skate park during the same times of day. It may be higher, but I bet there are still a significant number of injuries that occur at the same time of day to nonathletes as well. Also this author does very little to present the positive sides of athletics. No stats that show improved attendance rates, GPA's, or graduation rates among athletes. No mention of lower incidence of discipline issues at school or substance abuse among athletes. No mention of female athletes having higher self esteem, waiting longer to have intercourse, and having lower pregnancy rates as compared to their nonathlete peers.

All in all a very poorly researched and written article.

http://sitemaker.umich.edu/356.microsoft/educational__academic_eligibility

I found several studies that support the theory that athletics positively influence student's grades.

When you become a productive member of society it isn't all classroom and books. Extracurricular activities are no different than some of the distractions you will encounter when are in the real world. I believe that I am sending my kids to school to enhance their ability to become a productive, voting, tax paying member of society. To be that, it takes way more than reading books, taking tests, and being graded.

What is funny to me is the number of AD's who don't understand sport's economics. This is most likely caused by the extreme departure between business and academe. This reverse correlation has led to the current demise in funding and the crazy ideas many have for cutting costs and saving money.

I do agree with Kale Mann that you need to critically read and analyse the information in articles especially ones that involve statistical data. Kale made some excellent points about other things that need to be mentioned in the article. Critically analyzing statistics being presented in an article or presentation before making decisions or judgments is a major issue that I was harping on in the recent forum topic on the KSHSAA audit.

I do agree also with Will's point that extracurricular actitives are important in a high school student's development. I do believe however very strongly that going to class, reading, writing, excelling in math and science, developing good study habits, taking tests and earning good grades are by far the most important things a student needs to be accomplishing in school.

The article emphasizes that there needs to be a good balance between academics and athletics for high school athletes. That basic point is very valid and a good one.

Will, most college sports athletic directors understand sports economics very well and definitely operate their departments like a business. I guess we know how wrestling has fared when they do that.

I was talking about HS AD's not college AD's. Wrestling, even at the college level, is not an economic drain. The NCAA and Title IX have made college sports a numbers game as well as a business. You will be hard pressed to find many women's programs that generate net revenue. Thus the problem...

A HS wrestling program can easily pay for itself and make money. Football rarely makes money and in fact, if cut, could in most cases pay for all other extra curricular activities.

"As Athletic Directors add more non-conference games, participating students often find themselves unable to adequately fulfill academic course requirements. It is not uncommon for coaches to counsel key athletes to drop elective classes, even if those classes may significantly affect the college application process."

Show me the data backing up the above statement. I have been teaching for now 23 years and I have yet to do this or find an athlete that a coach has recommended do this.
I also do not know of any "elective courses" that are key to the college application process. Most are the required courses as set out by the state school boards, specific school boards, boards of regents of different states and college academic lists for NCAA eligibility. If anything coaches encourage their athletes to take challenging academic courses so the college academic load will be something the student/athletes can be successful at when they enter college.

"Many school teams must travel great distances for their competitions, resulting in students getting home at very late hours, yet they are still required to complete homework or other academically-related assignments. The notion that students can complete such work while on a long bus ride is hollow: few students have the self-discipline to devote quality time to studies amidst lively team members."

Great distance?, no most don't travel far enough to compete in quality events. They stay near their home schools or within their league to play or compete with the same athletes they have competed against for years.
Students do get home late from events, too late, this won't change in college either. Almost every school day has time for students to apply themselves and study during the school day, an example would be seminar or homeroom time.

The high school my son will attend has a required study hall after school for an hour if he wants to be part of their athletic program.

"Relentless practices that usually begin with the final school bell prohibit students from seeking after school academic help or clarification. Even if coaches acquiesce, the athletes are typically “benched” or forced to run punishment laps. Sports are a serious high school business that frequently includes weekend practices or invitational competitions."

I have witnessed just the opposite-coaches holding students out of practice until they finished commitments for their classes.

I have witnessed students not starting as someone else was doing their job in the practice and knew the information necessary to start in that position for the next game.

Punishment laps? No that is conditioning, athletes have to be in shape so they don't get hurt, if they miss practice and have no one to drill with or practice they usually have to run on their own.

The descriptive terms this article uses: relentless practices, great distances, expanded practices. I do appreciate it when someone who is not nor has not been involved in athletics attempts to learn something about how athletes do things. Perhaps the author should do more than drive by the school or athletic field before composing their opinion paper.

Will,

I did understand that you were talking about high school athletic directors. However, I used college athletic directors because I see the decisions that they have made to drop wrestling programs over the last few decades as an example of how wrestling does not always fare well when educational institutions purely run their departments based on profit making business decisions. We can blame Title IX and it has deinitely had an effect. However, there are reasons that wrestling and not football is the sport that is dropped by college athletic departments. Those reasons in my opinion are profit motivated business decisions made by college athletic directors. They evidently determine that football is or at least has the potential to be a bigger revenue and net profit generator than wrestling. And I am talking about total revenue brought into the institution, including large donations made by alumni and other donors. It would also include sponsporship money from corporate donors, more television exposure and bowl game revenue. If business profit making decisions are not the reason that college ADs pick football over wrestling, convince me that it is something else. They certainly could make their Title IX numbers better by dropping football over wrestling, since football has a lot more athletes than wrestling. I have come to the believe that we will not see college Division i wrestling programs grow or stop the decline until we get more money into college wrestling. Endowment funding or other types of gifting to colleges that have programs would be one way to achieve that. I encourage everyone in the Kansas wrestling community to contribute on a regular basis to a local Kansas college wrestling program and try to increase your contributions to the programs on an annual basis. Contact the college wrestling coaches on how to do that.

Will, as far as on how high school wrestling does as a profit making activity or in simply just paying for itself, I am not that familiar with the financial situation in high school wrestling. You say it is not an economic drain for the high schools and maybe that is true. A question I have for you on that is assuming it is true, could part of the reason be that high school wrestling might not really be paying the true cost for some of their expenses. Are some of these costs subsidized? For instance it has been my impression that high school coaches probably do not get paid for coaching anywhere near what they should considering the time and effort they put in. I would be interested in knowing how many total hours a typical high school wrestling coaching staff puts in, what their total coaching salary is and how much that translates to for an hourly wage. I have a feeling it is not too high but I could be wrong. I know that there are many activities that occur in a high school wrestling tournament that are done by volunteers that would also be an economic drain if paid for as a typical business would. Another thing I am not sure of is do wrestling teams have to pay some sort of rent on their practice facilities and for utilities and do they pay a rent for tournament usage? I think it is okay and very good that some of these high school sports costs are possibly being subsidized and supported also by volunteer efforts including those of coaches if they are being paid a low hourly wage. However, they need to be factored in if you are determining if the sports are really making money in the traditional business profit making sense that you are talking about.

Jeff:

You make some good points in your post. However, I am looking at this article more on the basic point that the writer is making. Here is how the article starts out:

That is the basic message that I am getting out of this article and I think it is very valid. We do want our kids to be involved in extracurricular activities. However we also do not want extracurricular time to be excessive to the point that it adversely effects our kids academic progress. As parents most of us want academics to rank in importance over athletics in their high school and college years.

I know I want my children to put more emphasis on academics than athletics. I want the schools that my children attend to also put more emphasis on academics than athletics.

This article in my opinion is about proper balance between athletics and academics in a student's development. It is saying that the athletic activities need to be structured so that they do not hinder the student's academics. I definitely believe in the importance of sports participation for my children but I really want them to put more emphasis on their academics. I played one year of college football at Kansas State University. I saw the sad results of student athletes, including myself at times, not having the proper balance between academics and athletics. I hope if any of the young wrestlers are following this topic that they are understaning the message that academics should have a higher priority than athleticism in their high school and college years.

Vince
If this is all the author said I would have no problem with the statement.

"High school athletic programs should be treated as a necessary and vital part of the education process, but not at the expense of academic standards and expectations."

After making the above statement then the author must have imagined some school where the other incidents I referred to in my post occurred at. He has no research or facts to back the supporting material up, it just happened somewhere. That's crap, I have worked one year in western Kansas, 20 years in northeast Kansas and one year in Kansas City as a teacher. I can cite specific years and coaches that back up each of my statements. I have journals from each of the years I coached and taught. This person wrote an article that someone is going to believe and has nothing in it about where it happened or who it happened to. I have been around 50-100 or so coaches in those years and thousands of athletes. I have not seen the stuff this writer mentions, school sports are not as written in the article "Sports are a serious high school business that frequently includes weekend practices or invitational competitions." The business schools are in is one of high stakes academic achievements and testing to meet No Child Left Behind Mandates and provide the taxpayers with competent workers to maintain and develop the economic system of our country. Not producing athletes, its crap to make that statement, how many of our "serious high school athletes" go on to professional sports, if that were our business we would go out of business for lack of success.
Sports are an extra curricular activity just like all the other extra curricular activities at the school. People just happen to enjoy participating,watching, and commenting on physical challenges so sports are followed by more people that the other extra curricular activities. Our society values some sports at a level that is quite amazing. If Lebron James and I put in the same number of hours at work there is a difference in our paychecks at the end of the month.

If the author wants to make his original statement and be done with it that's fine, I agree, just don't invent crap to support the statement.

Vince,

College football can be a net revenue generator in all of the ways you describe. High school football, however, is NOT. I am sure I don't need to point out the difference in the cost to equip and insure a football player versus a wrestler. Consider that a football stadium rarely gets used, does the decision to build one make business sense? College athletics and High School athletics cannot be compared as it is far from apples to apples. College AD's MUST make business decisions while HS AD's make spending decisions. I am sure you have a way better handle on where this all goes then your post indicates. High Schools are totally subsidized as NOTHING generates net revenue. Football is more of a spectator sport than wrestling but if spectators had to pay enough to make the sport break even NO ONE would come to the games! Football is kept around at the sacrifice of other activities. I promise.

Will,

I am not trying to be difficult but I just want to understand your point. In one post above you said that high school wrestling can easily pay for itself and make money but then in your last post you state that high schools are totally subsidized as NOTHING generates net revenue. The two statements seem to contradict each other but I am probably missing something. Could you explain that a little further for me?

Thanks.

I find this discussion quite interesting. Let me add my two cents worth.

I've never been a teacher, but have served as volunteer coach wherever I've lived or worked for most of my life since graduating from OU in 1973.

For 30 years I lived in Arizona, for 20 of those years I worked with high schools that were usually in affluent areas, but whose wrestling traditions weren't very strong. Having helped Duwayne Miller at Kapaun-Mt.Carmel from 1975-1978, I saw that it was possible to have high academic standards and outstanding wrestling teams.

At each school I've worked with since the early 1990s I have introduced and paid for with my own money the following award.

Outstanding Scholar & Wrestling Award. It is based 50 percent on the 1st semester's GPA (I don't use the cumulative GPA because I want kids who may not have started out being good students, but wind up becoming good students to have a chance), 25 percent on the team points scored during the regular season, and 25 percent on the team points scored at the state tournament.

I've always had a permanent plaque for the name of each year's winner each year, the winner each year gets a large plaque, plus dinner for two at an expensive restaurant, which is usually $100 to $150, this allows them to get an appetizer, most expensive, entree, dessert, pay the taxes and a 20 percent tip. I've been pleased that over the years previous winners would call me to find out who the winner was that year.

I have always told wrestlers I've coached you will not make a living wrestling, but you will learn two things in wrestling that will allow you to make a very good living as an adult: a strong work ethic and self-discipline.

It has been my experience that the best wrestlers on a team both high school and college were also some of the best students on the team. As an example I tell them about the 1974 NCAA championship team at OU. We had two 1st and one 2nd place wrestler. Gary Breece won at 118 pounds, he got a post graduate scholarship for from the NCAA and today is an orthodontist. Rod Kilgore won at 158, he was a finalist for a post graduate scholarship (at that time only 5 were awarded each year). Jeff Callard was 2nd at 167, he won a post graduate scholarship, and today is an engineering professor at OU in petroleum engineering.

Every kid who has won the award I've given has gone onto having a successful career. The only one who didn't attend college was dyslexic, but has a higly trained position in a hospital.

I've always viewed my job as a coach as to help them develop into becoming a successful adult. Wrestling separates the wheat from the chaff. You find out who has the necessary work ethic and self-discipline needed to become an outstanding wrestler, and hopefully student.

As to running for missing a practice, Duwayne Miller had only one hard clad rule; if you missed practice you had to make up the conditioning. Now if it was a prearranged approved absence he would work with the kid, if it was unexcused he didn't get to wrestle on the varsity until he made up the conditioning. Duwayne said he didn't recruit, so he didn't have the best athletes all the time. The only way KMC won most of the time was superior technique and conditioning.

Keep the conversation going, it is a worthwhile topic.

Vince,

A small amount of fundraising via a tournament can pay for the expenses incurred by most wrestling programs. Thus the statement, wrestling can easily pay for itself. (I suppose if you pay for the volunteer time it might be more difficult). My point was that the costs incurred on an annual basis to operate a wrestling program are very minimal compared to football. Football, basketball, and track are sacred cows and NEVER mentioned as being on the chopping block in Kansas.

Will,

Thank you. I appreciate the reply. I understand the point you were making.

I agree with you that football, basketball and track would probably be the last sports programs on the chopping block if there was a mandate to drop sport programs even though the football program might be the most expensive sport on the school's budget as you have stated. At most high schools though football is probably the most popular sport with the students and the community. I would be upset if they started dropping football at local high schools. I could see some parents and students looking for another school if their school did not have a football team, assuming they could even find one at that point. Let's hope that high school sports never get put on the chopping block.

BigApple:

I have read some good posts over the years on this forum and that post is one of the best that I have read. It is giving what I consider to be the perfect message to our young Kansas wrestlers. The message that it gives is it is possible to reach your full potential as a wrestler and as a student at the same time. The message also expresses the importance of reaching that full potential as a student. I was hoping that your message would not be missed here because I have seen some very good athletes in my life who did not understand or chose to ignore the importance of academics in their lifes. I played college football one year at KSU in 1969 (I ended up graduating the same year as you in 1973 at KU). I saw a lot of athletes including myself at that time who did not apply themselves in their studies. I think some of us thought that football was going to be our ticket in life and decided to just get by in class. I think that is a decision that young athletes including wrestlers at times still make today and it is a costly decision to make.

Parents and educators have to be proactive in helping athletes understand that they need to work as hard if not harder in the classroom as they do on the mat or the playing field. What a wonderful award that you set up in your role as a volunteer coach.



After I read that, I started wishing I was a wrestler on one of your teams. I think this would be a great award on all high school teams.



That is the exact message that I hope our young Kansas wrestlers including my son are receiving.



Here and with the below quote the message is you can become a great wrestler but you can also become a great student. Also realize it is your work as a student that will lead you to your life career. And the work ethic and discipline that you learned in wrestling will be a major factor in getting there.




That was just great stuff. Bravo!