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Some Thoughts on the Journey to Post-Secondary Sports

Posted in Health, tagged basketball, BC School Sports, scholarships, volleyball on December 3, 2024| 4 Comments »

I have sports on my mind this week. With our district hosting the BC AAA Girls Volleyball Provincial Championships and the start of basketball season across the province, my evenings have been full of seeing talented young athletes lately.

As a superintendent, a lifelong coach, and a passionate advocate for sports, I’ve had the privilege of working with countless students who dream of playing sports at the university level. From basketball courts to swimming pools and soccer fields, and even in our house with our own kids, I’ve seen what works, what doesn’t, and how the journey to post-secondary sports can shape young people’s lives in profound ways.

Let me start by saying this: playing sports at any post-secondary level is an incredible achievement. Whether it’s going to the US for the NCAA, staying in Canada for U Sports or being part of a college program, earning a spot on a university or college team is a testament to hard work, discipline, and passion. It’s something to celebrate, no matter the level.

That said, the path to post-secondary athletics isn’t for everyone—and that’s also okay. For high school athletes, the focus shouldn’t just be on recruitment. Enjoying the camaraderie, the big games, and the countless memories you’ll make in high school sports is just as important. Those moments will stay with you long after you have finished playing and too often I see families think high school sports is just a vehicle to access university sports and not for what it often is – a collection of amazing life memoires.

Here are some observations and tips I’ve gathered over the years for those who are considering post-secondary sports.

Playing High School Sports Should Be About More Than Recruitment

The joy of playing sports in high school is something you’ll never get back. The friendships you make, the pressure-filled championship games, the fun of road trips with teammates—these are the moments that shape you.

Don’t let the focus on post-secondary recruitment overshadow the experience. Most high school athletes won’t play sports at the next level, but that doesn’t mean the experience wasn’t valuable. High school sports build transferable skills like resilience, teamwork, time management, leadership, and dealing with adversity.

Celebrate All Levels of Post-Secondary Sports

Too often, the spotlight is on top tier university scholarships, as if they’re the only marker of success. The truth is, playing any sport in university—whether it’s U Sports, NCAA, or a local college—is a remarkable accomplishment.

I’ve seen students thrive in programs that fit their level, whether they’re stars in a smaller league or role players on a larger stage. Success isn’t defined by the level you play at but by the experiences you gain and the lessons you learn.

Do Your Homework on the Team

One of the best steps you can take is researching the programs you’re interested in. Look at the team roster. How many players in your position are graduating? How many spots will realistically be open?

And know how many players are on the roster and how many actually get to compete. Does the soccer team have 30 players and only dress 16 for games? Does the cross country team have 20 runners but are only able to take 7 to the championships? This kind of information can have a major impact on your experience with the sport at university.

Knowing this information can save you time and energy. It also shows coaches you’re serious about their program.

Focus on Academics—They Open Doors

In Canada especially, academic scholarships are often much larger than athletic ones. A strong GPA and solid test scores can make a huge difference in your options.

Academic scholarships not only benefit you—they’re also a major plus for coaches. If you can secure academic funding, it allows them to stretch their limited athletic scholarship dollars to recruit more athletes. This makes you an even more valuable recruit, as you’re helping the team while lightening the financial load.

Coaches value academically strong athletes—they’re less likely to struggle with eligibility requirements and reflect positively on the program. If you’re serious about post-secondary sports, being serious about your academics is non-negotiable.

Be Honest About Your Level

Are you truly a Division 1 athlete, or is your skill set better suited to U Sports or a local college program? Being honest with yourself is critical.

This isn’t about limiting your dreams—it’s about finding a program where you’ll thrive. A good fit, both athletically and academically, leads to the best post-secondary experience.

Decide: Do You Want to Play or Sit?

This is an important question: Would you rather be a role player on a powerhouse team or a star on a smaller one?

For example, I’ve seen basketball players who chose to join a strong team knowing they’d spend a lot of time on the bench. Others opted for smaller programs where they could be key contributors from day one. Neither choice is wrong—it depends on what you value most. Know this before going in, if you don’t want to sit on the bench for the first 3 years of your university career maybe that “full ride” isn’t as good as it looks.

Visit Schools and Meet Coaches

Seeing a campus, talking to the coaches, and meeting current players can tell you more than any recruitment pitch.

Pay attention to the culture of the team. Talk to people, look closer. Are players supportive of each other? What’s the coach’s leadership style? These factors can make or break your experience.

You also can dig into the academic programs – and ensure it is not just a sports fit but an academic fit for what you are wanting.

Take the Lead in Your Recruitment Process

Coaches want to hear from you, not your parents. This is your journey, and you need to own it.

Reach out to coaches, send your highlight clips, and follow up. Taking initiative shows maturity and independence—qualities coaches value.

Parents can support their kids by asking good questions, helping them weigh options and being a sounding board for ideas – but too many parents think their child’s university recruitment is theirs – it isn’t.

Your own high school coach can often be hugely impactful speaking to your character and many high school coaches are well connected with university programs and coaches.

Beware of the Monetization of Dreams

Too many families fall into the trap of spending excessive money on private trainers, showcases, and recruitment services, chasing the dream of a scholarship.

While some investment can be helpful, be wary of promises that sound too good to be true. Recruitment isn’t about spending the most money—it’s about highlighting your talent, being strategic, and finding the right fit for you.

If you need some assistance on anything post-secondary related, including athletic opportunities, a good first stop is with your school counsellor.

Enjoy the Journey

The recruitment process can be stressful, but it’s also an exciting opportunity to explore your options and think about your future. Take time to reflect on what you want out of your post-secondary experience, both as an athlete and as a student.

And most importantly, don’t forget to enjoy the journey. Whether you end up playing at the next level or not, the lessons, memories, and friendships from high school sports are something to cherish.

Final Thoughts

Playing sports at the post-secondary level is an incredible achievement and an experience that will shape you for life. Over and over I hear from university student athletes that the team gave them an immediate social network and connections at university. The process getting there doesn’t have to be overwhelming or consume your high school years. Focus on enjoying the moments, making memories, and being the best version of yourself.

And for all the grade 12 athletes out there right now – enjoy every moment of this year on the field, in the pool, on the court or wherever your sport takes you.

What do you think? Do you agree with these observations? What else would you add?

The image at the top of this post was created in Chat GPT 4

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The Most Important Game of My Life – A Long Read

Posted in Change, tagged Agrodome, basketball, BCHSBBA, Jason Winslade, Jon Acob, Ken Winslade, McRoberts, Paul Eberhardt, Steve Ewen on March 6, 2023| 14 Comments »

Wednesday, March 11, 1998.

It is twenty-five years ago this week, but I remember so many of the details of that day, it could have easily been last week.

Let me set this up a bit. I was a second-year teacher at McRoberts Secondary School in Richmond, BC. The school had previously been a junior high school and had its first graduating class in 1997. I was also the Varsity Boys Basketball Coach. I was in my 11th year of coaching and my 3rd at the Varsity level. The 1997-98 season was supposed to be a rebuilding year. We had one grade 12 in the regular rotation, complimented by an athletic group of grade 11s.

Even local games had media coverage during the boycott. Here being interviews by John Shorthouse from Sports Page.

And it had been a crazy year for high school basketball. Allegations of player recruiting filled the pages of the local newspaper sports sections. It was the year of the boycott, as dozens of teams refused to play teams that were alleged to be fudging the player eligibility rules. I was 24-years-old and with a blend of confidence, righteousness and naivety, I felt I was a part of a Star Wars like battle trying to blow-up the Death Star. I remember being told that the “stain of the boycott” would ruin my teaching career – that ended up being a bad take.

And then, all of a sudden, the McRoberts Strikers basketball team was playing well. Our team’s grade 12 forward Jason Rempel, while often oversized was a strong defender and a solid post player. And we had an improving group of grade 11s – Graeme Poole, Nick Maitland, Cyrille Bang, David Foreman and Greg Lee that were a formidable group. We were not ranked in the top 20 once the entire season, but we were definitely getting our wins. In early January, we got a 111-104 win over local rival, the Paul Eberhardt coached McNair Marlins, and a tight 3-point win over Jon Acob’s Burnett Breakers in mid-February got us the #2 Richmond seed for the Lower Mainland Championships.

Of course, qualifying for provincials was still a long shot. They were nine high schools now in Richmond but only Richmond, McNair and Steveston had ever qualified for the BC version of March Madness. But things started to fall into place. Our defense had really picked up. I was called a “junk dealer” for our style. One of my coaching mentors, and McRoberts vice-principal of the day, Kent Chappell, had helped put in a series of zone structures he used to win the BCs while coaching the Steveston Packers in 1984, and I had added my mix of box-and-one, triangle-and-two, match-up-zones and other non-typical formations I had picked up by trying to read every book at the local library on basketball coaching.

So, after another tight win over Burnett and a wildcard win over Killarney on Sunday, March 1st, we had done the improbable and qualified for the provincial championships. In rereading some of my quotes in the newspaper back then, I see I have truly made a life of being a sandbagger. I told Bob Mackin at the Richmond News following our March 1st win, “We have no superstars on this team just some good players. We’re not very big, don’t press well and are not real fast. We get lucky and seem to do everything just a bit better than our opponents to win.”

So, that was the Cinderella story – the McRoberts Strikers, a school only in its second year with a grade 12 graduating class, never having been ranked all season in the top 20 by the basketball pundits, advanced to the BC Championships.

But then there was more.

In the BCs of that time, 12 teams made it to the full-draw and 8 teams played an extra game on the Tuesday to qualify for the main tournament. So, maybe we could get one more win on this Tuesday draw (For those local basketball fans – you will remember if you didn’t win on Tuesday you played out the tournament at Grizzlies Practice Facility in Richmond.). We played the Prince George Polars. It was a squeaker – a one-point game in the 4th quarter. Four clutch free-throws from Graeme Poole clinched it for us and a 55-43 win. People don’t pay a lot of attention to who wins the Tuesday games – these are just the teams that will get blown out by the real contenders on the Wednesday.

So, here we are. We are back to Wednesday, March 11, 1998.

We had a small, but passionate group of fans. Debates still rage whether they misspelled my name by accident, or one of the N’s got cold feet.

We had drawn the Abbotsford Panthers in this round of sixteen game. Abbotsford was the Fraser Valley Champions and their point-guard Wayne Jones was one of the elite players in the province. And Abbotsford had a rich basketball history – one of the top programs in the province for decades. And on this Wednesday morning in March they brought the school with them from Abbotsford to Vancouver and this 10:15 AM match-up at the Agrodome. Literally, Abbotsford vice-principal Jinder Sarowa organized buses to transport the entire school. They had hundreds of loud fans with drums and horns. We had our boys’ families tightly packed together in the seats near our bench. We also had our school’s new cheer team on the baseline coached by first-year teacher Stephanie Laesecke (25 years later – we now have 23 years of marriage and 4 kids together).

Nobody was giving us a shot. Steve Ewen’s daily predictions in the Vancouver Province were almost never wrong, and he had picked Abbotsford. And the game started out as Ewen, the hundreds of Abbotsford students, and most everyone thought it would. When we called a timeout 3 minutes into the game, the score was 9-0 Abbotsford. Barking instructions to the boys, I could hear the Abbotsford fans in unison chanting “Start the bus” a reference to the game already being over just as it was really starting.

The moment at the end of the Abbotsford game. You can see the final score still on the clock.

And our next two possessions changed everything. Poole came down the next two times and hit 3-point shots. And then we were rolling. We went on a 22-3 run the rest of the quarter to take an 10-point lead and we never looked back. Poole finished with 11 points, Greg Lee had 20 and Jason Rempel had 21, and we had won 75-54. And what do I remember about late in the game? The now restless Abbotsford fans pegged a couple of us in the back with pennies. I remember picking one up and putting it in my pocket – I assumed it must be lucky!

Early 2nd quarter action from the semi-final game vs. Richmond. Tied at 17 at this point.

The next night was another big upset. We knocked off the Okanagan Champions, Clarence Fulton Maroons, 70-64. This win set up a semi-final match-up with the Richmond Colts – one of the most dominant high school basketball teams in the history of the tournament. Our luck ran out that night. In the prelude to the game, I was quoted in the Vancouver Province, “They’ve got eight or nine players better than our best player. It’s like a pro team playing a college team. You kind of know what could happen, but everybody wants to see what happens anyway. Everybody knows that we should lose by 30 or 40 but this place will be full because of the curiosity of “what if?” The Agrodome was sold out, and we were close for a half that night. But we did lose by 30.

Interview with Karin Larsen of CBC.

The Hoosiers-like story was over for McRoberts. I didn’t realize it then, but that run, and really that win over Abbotsford changed my life.

All the sudden, I was not just some young coach, but people treated me as some sort of coaching wiz-kid. When you win, you get opportunities. I had the chance to coach provincial teams, and work with some of the best coaches in the country. Because of our 1998 success, our school got invited to The Reebok Invitational Tournament in Toronto the following year, getting to play on national tv on Sportsnet. And I got coaching awards – like the next year the Ken Wright Award for Coaching. And I still think, if we lost to Abbotsford that Wednesday morning, none of this would have happened.

And accolades can often lead to other accolades, and newspaper and magazines did very flattering stories of my coaching and teaching. Three years later, I know in part from the media attention, I got hired in Coquitlam as a school vice-principal. Principalships and a superintendency followed.

And the next year at the BC Championship, Ken Winslade, the quiet behind the scenes leader of the BC High School Boys Basketball Association, came up to me and asked me to consider joining the executive. I was the first of a new generation to join. This connection would lead to the last twenty-five years of volunteering and sports administration that allowed me be President of the BC High School Boys Basketball Association for 3 years, negotiate tv contracts and sponsorship deals, and has led to the most impactful volunteer work I still do today supporting the girls and boys high school basketball championships in any ways I can.

And I still think, when we were down 9-0, if Graeme Poole didn’t hit those 2 straight 3-point baskets, my life would likely be different. It is true that coaches can get too much blame for losses and too much credit for wins. It is crazy to think how important some 16-year-olds making baskets have been on my life.

It is funny the moments that define us. I know, we make our own luck. But there does seem to be a lot of luck in how things work out in life.

For a longtime, I downplayed my involvement in athletics. I was sensitive to the “dumb jock” wrap many coaches get. I now fully embrace my love of sports and celebrate the experiences I have had and the many friends I have made. It is year 36 for me this year coaching basketball. And I am still chasing that elusive BC Championship or the “blue banner” (a reference to the banner schools get in BC for winning a championship in any sport that is hung in the school gym).

I owe so much to the young people I have worked with. My leadership skills I use in all parts of my life, are the ones that I hone through coaching sports. From soccer, to track, to volleyball and mostly through basketball, I have tested and refined my talents around motivation, building a vision, and leading.

Being interviewed by Province Reporter Steve Ewen at the 1998 Championships.

Rereading the newspaper clippings from a quarter century ago, I am reminded of just how the people I have met through basketball are many of the most important if my life. Province Sports Reporter Steve Ewen became one of my good friends and we still play slo-pitch softball together. McNair Coach, Paul Eberhardt now works with me in West Vancouver and runs our sports academy programs. Burnett Coach, Jon Acob has coached both my sons in high school basketball and we regularly team-up now as co-coaches (and one Jon’s players on that 1998 team Mike Stoneburgh is another great coach today). Ken Winslade from the Boys Basketball Association is still a mentor, and I now volunteer alongside his son Jason in running the girls and boys championships. And so many more.

I am sure if we didn’t beat Abbotsford 25-years-ago, my life would still be awesome but I am pretty sure it would be different. That day was defining.

I found the letter I wrote to the players at the end of the 1998 season. In part, I said:

Every November begins with optimism as one looks at the season ahead, but no one, myself included, could have forecast the surprising and exhilarating climax our season would have in March. In a year in which politics rather than basketball was the hot topic in high school hoops, our team emerged at the end of the year epitomizing all that is good about high school sports: hard work, class, integrity and sportsmanship.

I am proud to have shared one of the most memorable experiences of my life with you boys this year. Not any particular win, but the journey we went on is what was special. The B.C. Championships were a reward for a job well done. I think you al know that you were better basketball players, and probably better people this year than you were last year. Next year, we will strive to be better again. It is not the winning which is important but our journey.

All these years later, I hold to every word in this.

To all those who are playing or coaching in the BC Championships this week – enjoy every minute of it. And may you too have moments that will change your lives.

At the end of our final game of the 1998 BC High School Provincial Championships.

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The Problem With Basketball

Posted in Change, tagged basketball, high school basketball on December 16, 2018| 39 Comments »

If we were starting over with school and community sports, I don’t think basketball would be a school sport. It is a bit of a round peg in a square hole. And this is not easy for me to say, as someone who first coached a team in 1987 and has been involved ever since including some time as President of BC High School Boys Basketball.

The most recent impetus for this post comes from the response I received to a recent post I wrote – Some Different Ideas to Increase School Sports Participation. I had more emails, texts and in-person commentary on this post than any in recent years. And the post came out just as high schools across the province were selecting basketball teams, so that likely led to the basketball-heavy feedback.

So, let’s start with the question why are some sports school sports, some community sports, and some both? The most obvious answer is that because they have always been this way. And what sports fall into what categories in different provinces (or more broadly across North America) is not the same. And increasingly most former school sports are at least as popular in the community. Another good answer on which sports fall into which category is based on who owns the facilities. Schools in British Columbia have gyms – so gym sports are often school sports. Schools in British Columbia do not have ice rinks or pools, so ice and water sports are often community sports.

This is quite simple, but I want to come back to the title – the problem with basketball.

Basketball popularity has been booming in Canada. It is 3rd behind hockey and soccer in participation for 3 to 17 year-olds.

Young boys and girls start playing basketball starting about 5 years of age. By the time they are 12 or 13 there are various club program, travel teams and other opportunities to play basketball. When students show up in grade 8, in some schools several dozen boys or girls will have played a number of years of community basketball – often on teams described as “Elite” or “Rep” or otherwise denoted with some special status. And these players will show up at tryouts – sometimes more than 100 in the gym, and 15 will make the team and 85 will be told they are not on the team.

And even that team of 15 is really big. Only 5 players play at a time in basketball, so 2/3 of the team will always be off the court. And the coach of the grade 8 team, is now often an older student or a parent or well-meaning community member sometimes without deep training or experience. Basketball is a great game but just imagine the ongoing tension of a sport where 100 kids want to play, 15 make the team, 5 play at a time, and really often only 2 or 3 regularly touch the ball. And the coach has limited skills and experience.

Well is this really different from the way it has always been? I would say yes. What is different is that kids are playing a lot of basketball at a young age. In the past when kids showed up at grade 8, if you didn’t make the team, it was not as though you had ever invested any time in the sport, now you have. You may have played 7 or 8 years and are not making the team. This is a huge shift. When I showed up for tryouts in grade 8, yes a lot of boys did not make the team – but most of them had barely been exposed to basketball – they had not quit other activities to focus on basketball, and really, they didn’t actually play basketball so not making the basketball team was no big deal. Basketball was not the 3rd most popular sport in Canada then so didn’t need the infrastructure to support it.

And schools values have changed? Again, I would say yes. I know people worry we don’t have competition for young people anymore and they have to learn to deal with failure. But we also know that students being connected to their school is a really positive thing – whether it be a club or a team. And the thing about high school basketball is, if you get cut, it is not like community sports where you go to the next tier down, you stop playing. There are not many places in school this happens. Yes, the school musical has an audition – but almost all the kids who want to be involved usually get a small role or help as part of the crew. Yes, student council has elections, but they non-elected executive are usually still part of the larger council. Yes, some classes have criteria – but if you don’t get into Honours Chemistry, you still get into Chemistry, you are not shut-out completely. Yes, other teams have tryouts – but actually most sports are very inclusive and can take everyone. Whether it is swimming, track, cross-country, wrestling or football, these sports find places for almost everyone who is interested. Volleyball would be in the same place at basketball on this issue.

Other than basketball and a few other sports – name other experiences in high school that if you want to do X and you don’t qualify for the top tier you are completely shut out from X? I think the list is very short.

And before you use “but Michael Jordan got cut from his high school team and he turned out just fine” story, that is only partly accurate. As a grade 10 he didn’t make the Senior Team but he did play Junior Varsity that year. I think the Michael Jordan got cut story, actually helps make the point for a different system. Our system which narrows the number of participants is also doing so just as many are starting to grow. Some grade 8’s will be 12 inches taller before they stop growing.

Basketball Should Be Like Soccer. If basketball was structured as primarily a community based sport with different tiers and where when you signed-up you knew you would get to play, it would be so much better. Community organizations could ensure coaches were certified and adopt a common philosophy. And you could still have elite programs as soccer does. And you could still have school programs as soccer does.

I was struck by the disappointment and anguish from parents in the responses to my post on school sports. And it is something I see every year as a parent and coach. Kids love basketball. But schools have limited resources – with gyms and coaches. Schools are not the answer to provide 5 teams for grade 8s, this should be done by the community.

The problem is we are trying to fix a plane that is already in the air. Club programs have come in to supplement and at times compete with high school programs. These programs are a mix of non-profit and for-profit ventures with limited oversight. Parents are left to shop around blindly for opportunities for their children and too often kids don’t make a grade 8 basketball team and their basketball career is over. We are going from hundreds of grade 7s playing in the community and the numbers dramatically dropping in grade 8 as there are scarcity of spots on high school teams.

If I had a magic wand – basketball would be a primarily community based sport. The programs offered would be non-profit, with all coaches requiring certification. There would be paid coaches heading up coaching staffs of well trained parents and other community volunteers. Teams would have a maximum of 10 players. At younger ages the kids would play 3×3 to maximize touches on the ball and this would transition to 5×5 by upper elementary school. There would be tiers, maybe based on age and gender, maybe not. And yes school basketball would still exist as there is something about school sports that is special. But there would always be a place in the community for those wanting to play basketball. And there would be a universal facility / field sharing arrangements between all schools and local communities so communities could easily get into the gyms, and schools could easily access the fields.

If we started over, the primary focus of school sports would be those which are largely fully inclusive – if you want to participate you can. The focus of community sports would be these team sports that allow for tiers and levels that keep all interested young people involved. Knowing this is not possible, we continue to muddle forward, with basketball – the fastest growing game in Canada with a development and participation structure that is really quite a mess.

Of course, maybe I am wrong. Love to hear what you think.

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Some Different Ideas to Increase School Sport Participation

Posted in Change, Health, tagged 3x3, basketball, BC School Sports, beach volleyball, rugby, rugby 7s, track and field, volleyball, x-country on November 5, 2018| 13 Comments »

If I wanted to grow my blog audience, I could probably just write about youth sports, they are typically my most popular posts with anywhere from 2X to 10X the audience as when I write about other topics. One in particular – Is There a Future in School Sports? gained a lot of attention, and was also published by the AASA (the School Superintendents Association) in their School Administrator Magazine. Few topics I write about find people as polarized, passionate and wanting to engage.

I don’t hide my love of school sports. I think they are a wonderful part of our community. I loved playing as a student, I see the joy my children have and this is year 32 where I have been involved as a coach or administrator with school and youth sports.

So, a lot of people talk with me about the future of youth sports, school sports and ideas to reverse the perceived trends of decline in both. This post is about ideas, some of my own, some suggested by others, some a combination of the two, that are not just the little changes around the edges – but larger changes. I find too many people involved with sports organizations and responsible for making the rules often fall into two camps 1) they love the rules more than the kids so they think the answer to a problem is always more rules or 2) they are completely self-interested, and look to rules and structures that benefit their sport or their school without larger perspective.

My goal here is simple – we want more kids playing, more teams competing and more adults coaching. So with that background here we go. In no particular order:

Change the seasons

I think school soccer is smartly done. They run boys in the fall and girls in the spring. I know lots of people who coach both. We all know how difficult coaches are to find so this makes a lot of sense. Why not follow this for other sports? I would look to the two largest sports – basketball and volleyball. Rather than both running all levels and both genders in single seasons – why not do girls basketball and boys volleyball in the fall and then do boys basketball and girls volleyball in the winter. Or vice-versa, or alternate them. You would absolutely get some coaches to double-up. And this would also help with officiating challenges. I know, club programs would not be happy in either sport, but they would adapt. And Ontario has found a way to make this work, so there is an example out there. I think the same could be done for girls and boys rugby as well.

Automatic Eligibility for Some Sports

The next story I hear about someone transferring schools so a competitive advantage can be gained in curling, will be the first. We have transfer rules that apply to all sports, but really the bulk of concerns are in football, volleyball and basketball. As a start, exempt all primarily individual sports like cross-country and wrestling from transfer rules and consider extending the exemption to team sports. If a student changes school in grade 12 and wants to swim, ski, or run – let them – no appeal, no extra process. Focus the resources on those sports where there are concerns of recruiting and competitive advantage. With changes in education, more students are going to be more flexible with their learning plans and likely more shifts in schools. We also know sports are a great way to connect students to a school – getting to play sports in a new school should be encouraged, not always subject to a one-year penalty. And yes, I get the challenge of sports like football, basketball or volleyball becoming regional all-star teams – but let’s then focus on them and not worry about the cross-country runner or ultimate player. This would get more kids playing – that is a good thing!

Make Fair Play a Thing

One of the arguments I make for school sports in an era of great growth of club sports is that they allow school-values to be applied in ways that we may not see in community sports organizations. In many sports there are no cuts made – for example I think in almost all schools everyone who comes out for rugby, cross-country, swimming or wrestling is on the team. So, I will focus on two sports again – and again the big ones – basketball and volleyball. What if, as some local associations have done, we mandate at younger ages some fair play rules. Here is how it could work: in basketball you would need to have at least 10 players on the team and for the first half or three-quarters you would play shifts (this is already done in a number of places). Then the end of the game could be open substitution. This would apply some school values – increasing participation, and also make it different from club or community programs which are often win with the best players while the others watch. If more kids play, they will keep playing. One of the reasons kids quit is they sit on the bench. And I am told by some this model would mean we don’t know who the best teams are then. Wrong. We would know and maybe even more than ever as it would require you to have 10 players not just 5. Some coaches do this kind of system already but if we mandated that all grade 8-10 basketball teams had to shift at least 10 kids in the first half, and all volleyball teams had to play at least 12 players one set each, I think our numbers would grow. And yes, there would need to be some caveats for schools unable to field these numbers of players.

Play for Your Neighbouring School

Here is a controversial one. If your school does not offer a sport, play for the next closest school that does. If the goal is more kids playing more sports, why not. It is often too much to ask all schools to offer all sports. Just as students are taking courses at multiple schools why not also sports at multiple schools. This is fraught with challenges, including the worry that some teams would fold to create all-star teams at others and actually this might lead to fewer students playing, but it is worth exploring. I know the concerns around competitive advantage – but maybe those with students from another school would play up a tier, or be their own tier. Some sports are dying. And we want students to have the option to stay at their home school. This would be challenging, but interesting. (Not to distract from this one, but I think it is poorly thought-out to not make it easy for middle-school kids to play up for their catchment school – remember the goal is more kids playing more sports.)

Pay Attention to the Cool Cousins

The Olympics get it. It started with Beach Volleyball, then Rugby 7s and at the next Olympic Games it is 3X3 basketball. These offshoots of traditional sports have grown immensely in popularity. And while there is some crossover in each with their traditional cousins, they also tend to draw some different athletes to the sports. Rugby is beginning to do some 7s competition between schools, and I think all three of these (and I am sure there are others) are worth considering. What if beach volleyball and 3×3 basketball each had a weekend in the spring (ideally before other sports have their provincials) where there were High School Provincial Championships. I do think there is something to wearing a school uniform that is different. This would help grow these sports, engage some students in an additional sport at school and help keep our school sports relevant.

Think Activities Not Just Sports

I am sure there are others, but let’s use robotics and eSports as the examples for now. There are inter-school robotics competitions played throughout the fall and winter (the first one was this past weekend). These are schools competing with each other and winners being recognized with awards and getting the chance to advance to further competition. This sounds a lot like what we are doing in sports. And I think eSports is fascinating. There will be eSports teams in our schools within the next couple years (there may be already). We are already seeing them in the United States. So where should they fall for regulation and coordination. They could go on their own, or we could broaden the tent of “Sport” to “Activities”. I know this is a huge shift but there are probably other competitive activities between schools that could be included.

Hold the Community Accountable

If you have been involved with school and community sports long enough, you have probably come across the softball coach who says she wants multi-sport athletes but then says if you play school volleyball in the fall and don’t come to off-season training you won’t be eligible for the rep team next spring. Or maybe the soccer coach who also thinks that students should play a range of sports, but won’t allow his players to play school soccer because they might get hurt. I am not exactly sure how to hold these people accountable. But, for example, what if schools and communities gave preferential gym and filed rental rates not based on one’s profit or non-profit status, but on their commitment to encouraging students to play multi-sports including any school sports they want to play. This is large conversation – and an entire future post around the hypocrisy of many in the “we want multi sport athlete” community. It is silly that students cannot play school sports – largely between 3-5 PM because of rules set by community programs.

Conclusions

So, there is the list. Seven ideas to challenge thinking around school sports. And yes, with just a couple hundred words on each, they are at the 30,000 foot level, and easy to poke holes in without more detail. And also true, they all require more scrutiny. So, which ones resonate with you? What else would you suggest? I intentionally left off ideas with a big financial burden – I think no matter any of our personal feelings, there is no huge cash infusion coming for school sports. If we can agree on a collective goal of more young people playing school sports, more schools fielding more teams, and more teachers and community adults guiding our teams – what could we do?

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Basketball. History. Community.

Posted in SD45, tagged basketball, Brian Upson, Dave Shannon, ESPN, Longshot, Rockridge, Steve Eewn, West Van Secondary on February 27, 2017| 8 Comments »

It was one of those magical nights.

Last Friday night I joined a sold out crowd at the Kay Meek Theatre (one of two sellouts of close to 500 people each that night) to see the premier of Longshot: The Brian Upson Story. It was like a community reunion – for one night our community was transported back in time to 1982.

The Brian Upson story is hard to believe. It feels like a script for a Hollywood movie, the kind that people would read and say, this is not believable enough. With the premier of the movie, it has been told several times recently. The short version of the story is that the West Vancouver Highlanders won their only provincial basketball championship in their history in 1982. They won the final game defeating their league rival Argyle by a single-point, after losing to them three times earlier in the season in-front of a capacity crowd at the Agrodome in Vancouver. And it is far more than just a story of winning a basketball title, as the Highlanders were coached by Brian Upson, who, battling colon cancer had not been expected to live long enough to make it to the championships. He coached the team to the title, and passed away two weeks later. This does not fairly tell the story – it is worth reading the full story. In 2012, Len Corben described it as the most memorable sports story in the 100 year history of West Vancouver. Recently, in anticipation of the film Rosalind Duane did a wonderful feature in the North Shore News and Steve Ewen did a feature that ran in both the Vancouver Sun and Vancouver Province.

This post is not about retelling the Brian Upson Story – others have told it far better than I ever could.

I have seen many student films. This was different. I thought I was watching an ESPN 30for30 documentary. It was a professional film. I have a vision in my mind what a school project film looks like. But this blew me away. Teacher Dave Shannon and his students had taken on an incredibly challenging project and done an amazing job. And what a great reminder – when students do real work for a real audience they will rise to the occasion. I realize they didn’t have much choice – they had to do a great job. They were telling the story of the greatest sporting event in our community’s history. They had interviewed Upson’s wife and children and the players from the team – they were all going to be in the audience. And the students delivered. This is one of those great reminders about school. We too often don’t do real world work, but when we do it is magical.

And the power of real work was not the only reminder from the movie. The movie reminded us of the power of high school sports. All of the players, now 35 years later, spoke to the impact of the team and being part of the experience. The crowd footage from 1982 was amazing – as 5000 people cheered on the teams in the final – many of them students. It was something that connected the school. Schools are more than just taking courses in the same room together, they are communities.

And the film also reminded us of the power of a teacher. The players spoke about the profound impact Mr. Upson has had on their lives. He helped make them who they are today. Teachers and coaches have an enormous impact on young people and the movie serves to remind us of that. It also reminded us that it is very often those connections outside the class that are most significant – for teachers and students.

Even though everyone in the room knew how the story would end – they cheered along. When the buzzer sounded and the game ended the crowd in the theatre madly applauded. We were all transported back thirty-five years. Thanks to the students of the Rockridge film program.

Friday night was one of those special nights. It showed the best of community. And reminded us of the power of teachers, coaches and schools. Pretty impressive.

Here is the Official Trailer for the movie:

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Afternoon Passion

Posted in Change, Professional Development, SD45, tagged academies, Art West 45, baseball, basketball, dance, District Honour Choir, FAST, field hockey, hockey, robotics, rugby, soccer, tennis, YELL, Yong Zhao on January 10, 2016| 4 Comments »

It is hard to believe that one of the key tasks of January is to begin promoting our program offerings in our schools next September. This past month, our Board approved a series of new secondary school courses and programs. It is exciting to see a culture of innovation come to life in the program offerings that teachers, principals and schools are bringing forward – I absolutely love the passion-based offerings for students.

We have been offering academy programs for just over a decade. It started with hockey and soccer. For many years, students interested in a particular academy program would have to transfer to one of our high schools to participate. We have changed this over time.

About four years ago, we began to talk about the idea of “one district, three campuses”. This is based on the principle that students should be able to attend their local secondary school with their friends, but have access to programs for part of their schedule at another site. It has not been a simple move. There have been logistics to overcome – calendars had to be aligned so high schools all had the same professional development days. Timetables also had to be coordinated. In our case, we now have timetables at each of our high schools where the blocks in the morning rotate and the afternoon blocks are fixed. So students have the same last period class each day. This allows us to bring together students from multiple sites each day in the afternoon.

Our school schedules are built so students can complete core areas in the morning, and if interested, pursue specialty programming in the afternoon.

This coming year we now have 10 different academy-style programs open to students from all schools. We continue to be strong with sports – offering academy programming in soccer, hockey, basketball, baseball, rugby, field hockey, and tennis. We have also now added mechatronics robotics and dance for next year. The majority of these programs occur in the afternoon, with some classes before school and on weekends. In addition to these programs we have several courses that are open to students from all schools – YELL (an entrepreneurship program that runs after school and partners students with business leaders in the community, FAST (First Aid Swim Training, where students earn credentialing towards becoming a lifeguard) and a District Honour Choir (that practices in the evening and performs locally and beyond). In Art West 45 students can attend their own high school one day and every other day participate in a program that allows those passionate about arts to get extended time in this area. It is the same principle for ACE-IT Carpentry where students attend the program every other day working towards their Level 1 carpentry credential.

In all we are now at about 15 and growing in the number of options we have available that allow students to pursue their passions as part of their school program – coming together with students from across the district who share these interests.

There is wonderful value in students attending their local school but we also need to find creative ways for students to pursue their passions. Five years ago none of the programs existed that would allow students from a variety of schools to attend. Now they are part of our culture. A culture where talented teachers share their passions with students who are thirsty to pursue these areas.

I am not sure that what we are doing is transforming our system. I can hear my friend Yong Zhao in my ear that we are maximizing the current system and not changing the system. We are continuing to find ways for students to pursue their passions which is all part of building a system that is relevent, connected and engaging for our learners.

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Is There a Future in School Sports?

Posted in Change, Health, tagged AASA, basketball, concussions, high school sports, School Administrator, school sports on August 4, 2015| 8 Comments »

This post is a duplicate of the article in the AASA – August 2015 School Administrator Magazine.

The entire issue (here) is dedicated to topics related to high school sports.

A superintendent’s case for a forward-thinking approach to interscholastic athletics addressing safety, cost and the balance with academics

His first reported concussion happened in youth soccer. His second came in high school football. A possible third head injury may have happened in pro football training camp. But when a rookie 24-year-old linebacker with the San Francisco 49ers, Chris Borland, decided to retire from the NFL in March, not due to injury but rather to prevent injury, the sports world uttered a collective gasp.

Parents and players have taken notice of Borland’s story and the growth in concussion research. In my 7,500-student district, I recently received an e-mail from a parent quoting Mike Ditka, an NFL Hall of Famer and legendary Chicago Bears head coach and tight end. While that may have surprised me, the provocative words he echoed did not: “If I had a young son today, I wouldn’t let him play football.”

More than ever, superintendents are being drawn into controversies around interscholastic sports. In just the past few months, news media have reported on a superintendent who resigned following the contentious termination of a varsity basketball coach; several superintendents drawn into student-athlete disciplinary cases over alleged hazing; a superintendent challenged by her community after she disciplined a football coach for an offensive sideline tirade; a superintendent who cancelled games against another school over the rival team’s “Redskins” nickname in support of his own school’s Native American population; and several superintendents caught in the middle of school board budget debates around financial support for school athletics.

Sports and schools have been interconnected for generations. Yet the rising tide of serious challenges is raising new questions about the sustainability of interscholastic sports programs. These deal with student-athlete health risks, competitive pressures from a social media-fueled public and tough questioning around the educational value of school-based programs when public revenues are stressed. Jointly, or in isolation, these pressures could lead to a scaling back, if not disappearance, of some school sports in the coming years.

Reigning Romanticism

To an outside observer, it seems as if high school sports never have been more popular. Varsity sports are big business, with communities investing in football and basketball facilities and major sports news outlets like Bleacher Report and ESPN giving high school athletics expansive coverage.

Beyond widespread media attention, several other factors support the notion that school sports will continue to thrive. Communities have a rich history of school sports, and nostalgia runs deep in our schools, notably in smaller communities whose sole identity these days may be tied to their public schools.

Adults often romanticize their own school sports experiences — from cheering on the football team to scoring the winning goal in a soccer match or a buzzer beater in basketball. Superintendents recognize the considerable pride that comes to a school and a community when a sports team wins a regional or state championship. Movies such as Hoosiers and Rudy continue to inspire us.

And unlike in other countries, where sports facilities used by pre-collegiate students typically are not located on a school campus, gymnasiums in North America generally are an integral part of school campuses. Given the physical connection, it makes logical sense that sports such as basketball, volleyball and wrestling will continue to remain within the school domain.

Three Pressures

The challenges I see school system leaders confronting in interscholastic sports fall into three categories.

Athlete safety. Coaches and school leaders always will assert that students’ safety comes first in scholastic sports participation. But grim evidence from expanding medical research on the long-term effects of sports-related concussions indicates that brain trauma can cause permanent cognitive impairment, memory loss, depression, dementia and chronic traumatic encephalopathy, which can lead to erratic behavior and suicide.

We’re learning that it’s not just the bone-crunching body hits in football that cause injury. Successive sub-concussive blows, even in sports such as soccer, rugby, lacrosse and ice hockey, can cause as much or more brain damage. The recovery time can be longer for children and adolescents. Notably, the majority of injuries occur during practices, not in interscholastic competition. A recent study published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics indicated 58 percent of reported concussions in high school football occurred in practice sessions.

Most chilling, however, is the “culture of resistance” among players to self-report concussion symptoms. According to the Western Journal of Emergency Medicine, “High school athletes and those with scholarship possibilities especially will try to convince parents and coaches that they feel fine, in order to resume play.”

Other serious student safety challenges include physical harassment, sexual abuse and the ugly ritual of team hazing. These issues are forcing superintendents, like one last fall at a high school in New Jersey, to take serious measures — in that case, cancelling the school’s varsity football season in response to a hazing incident. Community and public reaction to the cancellation was mixed and only proves to demonstrate how difficult it will be to make changes to the nation’s most popular sport.

Blurring lines between school and community sports. Beyond health and safety concerns, sports themselves are changing. Basketball, volleyball and soccer, for instance, used to be school-based sports primarily. Now, it seems as if the school season is just preparing young athletes for the extended club season. The Amateur Athletics Union basketball circuits across the continent have youngsters playing dozens of games, even sometimes more than 100, during the “off season.” Colleges use the AAU programs as the go-to source for recruiting athletes, meaning parents no longer see school sports as the pathway to university athletics.

Coaching and profit motives in some community programs have professionalized youth sports and raised questions about where school-based sports fit into this new world. In the community, athletes can freely move between programs in a “free agent” environment, and coaches and sports programs can be talent collectors, while public schools hold to academic and residential eligibility rules that limit movement.

High school sports once were neatly organized into seasons that more or less matched the terms of the school year. Students could run cross country in the fall, play basketball in the winter and participate in baseball or softball in the spring. Over the last couple of decades, youngsters have been pushed into a 12-month calendar. This poses a challenge for schools that try to encourage students to play multiple sports at the same time non-school-based sports programs are stressing specialization.

The place of sports in school. One historical advantage for school sports over those in the community has been the cost of participation. In most school districts, there is no pay-to-play measure. This has changed in recent years. As school district budgets tighten, superintendents and school boards are faced with choosing whether to prioritize athletics or core classroom services.

We also are seeing the need to redirect revenue sources once targeted for athletics, such as those generated by campus vending machines and gym rental use, to support the overall operating district budget. I am faced regularly with turning down requests to financially support school sports in my district as teams rely on user fees and parent fundraising more than ever to cover costs.

While competitive sports in secondary schools engage small numbers of participants, we realize we need to find ways for all students to be active to support their physical and academic health. Given the alarming rate of youth obesity, there are concerted efforts to focus on sports that promote inclusive participation and lifelong fitness. Classes in yoga, dance and personal fitness are becoming more common in high schools and our physical education classes have decreased their attention to competitive sports while increasing their focus on lifelong fitness.

Finally, the increased emphasis on global academic competition in education challenges the place of high school sports in the future. When our nations are competing with Finland and Singapore on the international stage and the stakes for our students are rising, competitive school sports can be seen as a distraction. Do we want our great math teachers spending their nights preparing lessons or coaching basketball? (OK, the answer is probably both!) As the expectations ratchet up for educators in the classroom, it is harder to see where commitments to competitive athletics fit into the new definition of a teacher.

The Way Forward

As a school principal recently said to me, “If we were starting schools from scratch, do you really think we would include competitive sports when the community does them so well?”

This conversation really challenges me. I have coached varsity-level sports, I’ve been president of the High School Basketball Association, and I’ve seen the amazing and continuous benefits of school sports on the lives of young people. I would far rather be the superintendent cheering on the championship team than overseeing the demise of these programs — which is precisely why we need to take a serious look at competitive sports in schools moving forward.

At their core, our schools are about nurturing the brain. As I wrote in my response to the parent’s e-mail with his warning from “Iron Mike,” we need to play close attention to the evolving science of brain injury and take student safety seriously. But let’s evolve our sports rather than eliminate them.

Football needs to be different because we know better than to continue to allow head contact in the game. The heads-up tackling initiative is a step forward. Helmet-mounted impact sensors may be another. Within the next few years, concussion management training for coaches and conservative “return to play” guidelines must be standard protocol.

We need to look at whether some sports are managed better in the community and, if so, perhaps we should stop offering them in schools. In British Columbia, we offer 17 different sports for boys and girls through our schools. Working with a mix of for-profit and not-for-profit groups, all those involved in sports need to jointly support high school student-athletes and not be in perpetual competition with one another.

For me, hearing community members tell “Friday Night Lights” tales of the past offers wonderful nostalgia and history, but it is not instructive about where we need to go next. Superintendents and other forward-looking system leaders must begin to envision competitive school sports for 2035, not 1955. The challenges individually are not insurmountable, but collectively they are a daunting set of factors. While I am convinced we could do nothing and school sports would continue for a while; looking 20 years out, like many other aspects of schooling, they may have to evolve.

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Will School Sports Disappear?

Posted in Change, tagged Agrodome, basketball, coaches, community sports, Kidsport, school sports, volleyball on February 3, 2015| 5 Comments »

So, having outlined some reasons why school sports may endure in my last post, there are also some realities that lead one to see that there are a number of factors working against school sports right now.

In no particular order, here are some of the challenges that school sports face going forward:

The discussion around concussions and brain injuries seems to be growing all the time. And quickly, the conversations often move to sports that have or are perceived to have high levels of head injuries. Two of these sports are two of the most popular in high school – football and rugby. And to be very fair, both sports are trying to get out in front of the issue and make their games safer. Examples include the Safe Contact Program in Canada that deals with heads-up tackling. The issue of safety is not going away, and there are definitely voices that question whether schools should be active in sports that can be seen to be dangerous.

We have continued to see a decline in teacher coaches in schools. Unlike, our American counterparts, high school coaching is almost exclusively a volunteer experience (there are some Independent Schools that offer a stipend). And over time, there has been a shift from school coaches to community coaches. I have seem some local data that shows the majority of coaches in almost all schools are non-teacher coaches. There is a commonly told story that teacher anger at government and new teachers without the same values as those of previous generations are the culprits. The story seems far more complicated and the real stories don’t make up these myths. This issue seems part of larger shifts in society that see teachers putting on their parenting hats quickly after school and leaving to coach their own children who are now playing more sports and younger ages than ever before. Teachers are also far more likely to be working as tutors or otherwise busy after school.

Also on the topic of coaching, we have moved from volunteers to professional coaches throughout youth sports. Soccer and hockey clubs no longer rely just on willing moms and dads as coaches but have technical directors to lead their clubs. While some coaches are trained and certified in schools the vast majority are willing volunteers looking to connect with kids and support them knowing the power of sports to help connect young people to school and positive peer groups. Somehow these types of coaches are not enough anymore as expertise is now becoming expected in both the community and in schools.

One of the advantages of school sports over community sports has been cost. School sports have been far cheaper alternatives than those in the community. This has been changing. Now school sports are reflective of the total cost of the offerings, and often can be several hundred dollars for a season to cover referee, tournament and other charges. While there are still some very inexpensive sports to run in schools, this has been changing. There are also not the same sources of revenue to support school sports – traditionally some gym rental revenue, or vending machine revenue or monies from other sources could help support school sports – as budgets have got tighter these sources have disappeared. Now, schools, like the community, are having to find ways to ensure all young people have access to sports. And the cost issue does not seem to be going away.

Did you know there are 17 school sports in British Columbia? I am sure you can name the first few quite easily – basketball, volleyball, football. But did you know about curling, tennis and ski and snowboarding? There are some questions of whether there are too many school sports. Again not a simple issue. I have coached some senior boys and girls soccer. Now soccer is done very well in the community but there was something great about having students organize by schools and play using “school values” which are often different from the values promoted in the community. Like UBC saw when they looked at reducing their university Varsity sports, any move to reduce the number of sports would be met with questions of “why us”? It does seem unwieldy to try to offer so many sports particularly given the other challenges.

In referencing a need to look at our model in the past post, I did begin to make the argument that we are moving to a much more participatory culture with a focus of having all young people engaged and not just the elite athletes. There is no shortage of news stories around the concerns over youth inactivity and governments of all levels around the world are working on strategies to have young people be more active. And while “sports” are a great way and we need to be exposing more kids at younger ages to the range of options, “competitive sports” in schools are often about the few participating not the many. While it is great to win provincial championships, there is definitely something to be said for having all students out running and playing.

It used to work out perfectly – there are three natural terms to a school year and three sports seasons. Of course the era of a sport being done in a single season is over. In the old version, come November the volleyballs would go away and the basketballs would come out. Then come spring break, the basketballs went away and out came the track spikes. Now all seasons spill into one another. It is hard for coaches to coach multiple sports and the community quickly picks up the parts that the school is not doing as almost all sports at high school are year-round.

Traditionally schooling has been very localized. The sense of global competition was not ever-present as it is today. As the academic competition increases, school sports are often seen as an add-on for teachers and students. Teaching has never been more difficult and the expectations around the profession are at an all-time high. Do parents want their math teachers coaching volleyball for 3 hours a night or prepping their lessons? Of course the answer is probably both. But this is a huge challenge as teachers invest more time in their lessons to support students and students invest more times in their studies to be competitive in the global learning race, sports can be seen as a nice extra but not part of the core for school.

Our current set of rules are all about schools, yet increasingly our system is about students. The system of school eligibility is about creating a fair playing field for all schools. There are a number of eligibility policies in place to keep this. And this has largely worked. We have an ongoing trend of students taking courses from multiple locations, often a blend of face-to-face and online courses and it seems likely that students will increasingly be defined less by being a member of one school. So, as a student takes a couple of courses at one school, a few at another and still other with a third institution online – how do we deal with this in a school sports eligibility sense? School sports are built around the “school” as the centre point but personalizing learning is about the “student” at the centre. And while I was a vocal leader of creating a fair playing field for schools I see the world shifting.

Try this out. Find a really good high school volleyball or basketball player and ask them – who do you play for? In these two sports that have been primarily school sports throughout time, most kids will not answer with their school but their club. Students now primarily identify with their club not their school. This has happened fast – I see it with my own elementary aged children. Yes, kids play sports for the school but this is not seen as their primary identification. While yes, in some sports in some communities the high school is the primary or only game in town – there are no sports left where the majority of training and growth happens in schools. Student athletes compete for their school but they play for their clubs.

Parents no longer see school sports as the pathway to university athletics. One of the great appeals of school sports to families has been that they open doors to a university education. Students are now regularly seen through club programs and students could receive full scholarships in a “school sport” without ever playing that sport in high school. Colleges and universities are also looking to bypass school programs creating their own club structures that feed their university programs rather than relying on high schools to develop their future players.

And of all of the challenges, I think the biggest one might be that potentially the community does a better job than schools of providing competitive sports. Public and private providers in the community may be better at offering competitive sports than schools. I wonder, if schools did not currently offer competitive athletics would there be a push to start them? I think the answer is no. The number of community, not-for-profit and for-profit groups offering competitive athletics is growing exponentially. And while some of the offerings make me cringe, there are many fabulous opportunities for young people in the community that did not exist even a decade ago. And while not perfect, groups like KidSport are helping make community sports accessible to all families.

I don’t think there is any one of the challenges in on the list that is insurmountable. It is more about the cumulative effect of them all. And to be clear, I am definitely not convinced that the loss of school sports would not be without huge repercussions for schools from overall student engagement, to morale to achievement levels – it might be a future reality though. And if sports remained in independent schools and not public schools I think we would see a mass exodus from our public institutions.

While we are envisioning teaching, learning and schooling of the future we better add athletics to the conversation. If we don’t, there will be more voices like Amanda Ripley, making the Case Against High-School Sports. For me, hearing stories about finding our way back to the 1970’s when schools dismissed and Empire Stadium was full with students for track meets or the glory days of basketball championships at the Agrodome are great stories but not instructive. We need to get to figuring out the role of schools in competitive sports as we go forward.

And while I am convinced we could do nothing and school sports would continue for a while, looking 20 years out we need to think of what new model will work.

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Is There a Future in School Sports?

Posted in Change, tagged basketball, Howard Tsumura, Province Newspaper, school sports, sports on January 28, 2015| 7 Comments »

This is the first of two posts on the subject of school athletics. I was planning to start with a series of reasons why today’s students may be the final generation to see sports in school as we know them but instead I am saving that for my next post. For this first post I want to outline five reasons why school sports may continue well into the future.

School sports have always been a big part of my life, as a student, a teacher and a parent. Some of my most wonderful friendships are because of connections I made through school athletics. I do think we are in rapidly changing times, and suggesting that school sports may slowly disappear from our schools is not too far-fetched (As a bit of a preview I think issues like cost, safety, available coaches, onerous regulations and increased competition are all challenging school sports). That said, I find a number of compelling reasons that may mean the obstacles will be just that obstacles, and school sports will continue well into the future.

Here are five reasons that can lead me to believe those of you watching your children play school sports, will get to repeat the rite of passage with your grandchildren.

Firstly, nostalgia is big in schools. One of the qualities that people like about schools is they generally look the same for children as they did for their parents. Adults often romanticize their school sports experiences – from cheering on the football team, to scoring the winning goal in the soccer game. School rituals are often slow to change thus one could argue school sports are not going anywhere. There will be too much of a push to keep them. And while one can point to some jurisdictions around the world that don’t have them, they never have. School sports are such a part of the fabric of our schools.

Somewhat related, is that high school sports receive much more media coverage that community sports. When the media chooses to shine a light on school sports the public watches and listens which then influences the decisions young people make around sports. We are especially fortunate in British Columbia with Howard Tsumura at the Province Newspaper. No other major daily paper in the country gives the attention to high school sports as the Vancouver Province and Howard’s work, like his recent piece on why he loves high school basketball, helps ensure school sports are in the public eye. From our major daily newspapers, to television to local community papers there is far more coverage for teenagers playing school sports than those playing community sports. And this, in turn, helps to continue to support high school sports programs.

While there are many others in the community offering sporting opportunities, school districts in British Columbia, and across North America, own most of the gymnasiums. So when it comes to sports like volleyball, basketball, badminton and wrestling, it makes sense for schools to offer them since they have the facilities. For outside providers to offer these sports they have to pay gym rentals which can be often cost prohibitive. In other countries gymnasiums are like hockey rinks in Canada, and community facilities. As long as schools own the places where sports take place they will continue to be primary providers of the sports.

Another real potential for school sports is that, like with so much else in our schools, sports programs will evolve and new models will be created. I am particularly vested in this as we are trying just that in West Vancouver. For us, we have taken one of the primary school sports, basketball, and wrapped some programming around it (HERE) that help support athletes, develop coaches and keep students at their home school. For better or worse, sports have changed where almost all sports offer year-round options and training begins at much younger ages. School sports and community sports need to form new partnerships so that students are not left to select between playing sports at school and the community. There also needs to be different entry points – so you can have a team that has a range of commitment levels but all those involved have access to training and support to meet their levels of interest. Our thinking around new models, is that rather than have all students attend one school with a particular sports passion, how do we support them at multiple schools, so they can continue to compete for their home schools and we can reinforce the value of inter-school competition.

Another possibility to ensure the long-term viability of school sports is some sort of new hybrid model of recreation and competition. There is clearly a global push to have all our students be more active. Our traditional sports have often been about selecting some students to participate in a model where a small percentage of the student body actually participate. There are exceptions like football and rugby that have larger numbers, but it is generally true that school teams are quite small given the overall population of many schools. One possibility is that a new group of sports emerge / reemerge that have larger teams and are more recreation based. We have seen this with the growth of Ultimate in schools. Another possibility is that increased resources shift from inter-school teams to in-house intramural programs

There are major shifts happening in schooling. And so many shifts with the nature of teaching and learning. It is interesting that so far most of the discussion around school sports seem to be about trying to return them to some glory days of the past. In the next post I will outline some real challenges that seem to be facing school sports moving forward.

There are many who would argue that they just couldn’t imagine schools without sports as we know them. But that is not really the purpose of this post – it is not about whether they are important, it is about the drives and blockers to their long term success.

As I talk to athletes and coaches and read stories in the newspaper, in many ways school sports are continuing to make a difference like they always have before. And, of course, they have a lot going for them to assume this will continue into the future.

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Random Facts and Some Homework for You

Posted in SD45, Social Media, tagged basketball, blogging, Dean Shareski, Johnny Bevacqua, Tia Henriksen, West Van Secondary on January 2, 2014| 7 Comments »

If you read other edu-bloggers, you will have likely seen these posts that are spreading. I had shied away from doing one myself, but it was only a couple of posts ago I committed myself to becoming more involved in the education blogging community. How it works is colleagues in your network “tag you” with a homework assignment to share 11 random facts about yourself, and then answer the 11 questions provided, and then invite 11 others to answer 11 questions asked of them.

I am somewhat skeptical — it sounds like a pyramid scheme. I know when I was seven I was supposed to send five postcards to people I knew and within three weeks I was going to get 400 postcards from people around the world — my mom said I wasn’t allowed to do it.

I have been “tagged” twice, so below my facts are answers to both sets of questions.

11 Facts About Me:

1) I love routines. I know that is not considered to be a good thing by many, but even on vacation I love a schedule with a sense of tasks being accomplished.

2) I have a geographic tongue — this feels like over sharing, but only about 1% of the population have one.

3) I would prefer to speak in front of 500 people than make small talk in a room of 10.

4) I was 39 years old before I travelled outside of North America.

5) My wife and I went to the same high school but didn’t know each other (she was one year older); she may have been a little bit “cooler”. We started dating when we on the staff together at that same high school and I was assigned to be her “mentor”. After we were married we taught on the same staff for one year before I took a job in Coquitlam. I also spent one year – my first year – teaching on the same staff as my mom.

6) Last spring break our family filmed an episode of the Property Brothers – Buying and Selling. It starting airing on HGTV in the United States on January 1st and starts airing in Canada on January 7th on the W Network. We learned a lot about how “real” or “not real” reality TV really is.

7) I am in my 26th year of being involved with coaching basketball / basketball administration — my first coaching assignment was in 1988, coaching the Grade 7 boys at Woodward Elementary School in Richmond.

8) I loved playing the saxophone in high school, but now I regret that I never really learned to play the piano.

9) I feel a connection to West Vancouver because my grandfather taught at West Van Secondary in the late 1930’s and early 1940’s.

10) My peak weight was 248 pounds but I have spent the last 20 years weighing about 195 pounds.

11) I know that this trait is really not that popular these days in schools, but I am very competitive and I really like to win.

Questions from Johnny Bevacqua

1. What keeps you up at night? My four-year-old daughter — she is still not keen on sleeping through the night in her own bed

2. What would you consider comfort food? All-you-can-eat sushi

3. What is one thing you would change about your job? My house and my job are too far apart – I would make them closer together

4. What is one thing you would change about schools today? Stop valuing some courses (e.g. sciences) more than others (e.g. arts and trades)

5. What is one piece of advice you would give to someone? Go for it — there is always another job

6. The biggest inspiration in my life is___________________? My wife — she is awesome!

7. What was the first music concert you attended? Probably Fred Penner. Without my parents, I think it was Harry Connick Jr.

8. What is the first movie you attended? Swiss Family Robinson

9. Other than work, I have a passion for_____________________? My family

10. If you wrote a book, what would the title be? Either “Go Where the Kids Are” or “Just Win Baby!”

11. When I grow up I ______________________ will just be a big kid.

Questions from Tia Henriksen

1. What are your favourite and least favourite colours? Favourite — blue; least favourite — brown

2. What was your favourite subject / least favourite subject in school? I loved History 12 and never liked (or was very good at) Art

3. Where were you born? In a hospital

4. What was your lowest grade in your post-secondary classes? In what class? C in Urban Geography of Thailand (poor course choice)

5. What is the best characteristic you received from your mom? Appreciation for traditions

6. What is your favourite childhood memory? Spending time in Naramata, and later in Penticton, with my grandmother every summer

7. How old were you when you learned to swim? Probably about five – we did lessons every summer at South Arm Pool in Richmond

8. Is Disneyland really the Happiest Place on Earth? YES — I love theme parks and I like to have the entire day planned out

9. What’s your favourite video you’ve watched recently on social media? Dean Shareski’s TEDx Talk from last spring

10. If you could plan it, what would your last meal consist of? Sushi and lemonade

11. What makes you happiest? Watching my kids play sports

11 Random Questions for You:

1. If you could only watch one television station what would it be?

2. Looking back at your schooling, what was the silliest rule your school had?

3. Who is the greatest ever Canuck?

4. What is the greatest rock group of the 1980s?

5. What is something education related you have changed your opinion on over your career?

6. What is the warmest place you have ever been — and how warm was it?

7. Poorest fashion trend you have seen in schools in the last 10 years?

8. What was more frustrating to deal with in your school — Pokemon cards or silly bands?

9. Describe your favourite high school teacher in four words

10. What is the best reason to go on Facebook at least once a day?

11. If blogging was outlawed tomorrow — what would be your reaction?

I Challenge the Following People to do their Homework:

I know it is a bit of a cop-out, but I will challenge all of those bloggers in the West Vancouver School District community to consider giving this activity a try. I will not call you out by name, but hopefully some of our Trustees, Principals, Vice-Principals and Teacher bloggers will take this on — and then, maybe challenge some of our student bloggers to do the same.

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Older Posts »

Posts Tagged ‘basketball’

Some Thoughts on the Journey to Post-Secondary Sports

The Most Important Game of My Life – A Long Read

The Problem With Basketball

Some Different Ideas to Increase School Sport Participation

Basketball. History. Community.

Afternoon Passion

Is There a Future in School Sports?

Will School Sports Disappear?

Is There a Future in School Sports?

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