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Some Different Ideas to Increase School Sport Participation

Posted in Change, Health, tagged , , , , , , , , 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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Will School Sports Disappear?

Posted in Change, tagged , , , , , , on February 3, 2015| 5 Comments »

girls sports

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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