Do high school sports have a value that goes beyond entertainment and exercise? Colorado Track XC file photo.

If you read the newspaper recently, you may know that our state’s largest school district is staring down approximately $70 million in budget cuts over the next two years.

That story line has a parallel, though with smaller numbers, in every school district in the state. Including the one you live in.

If you haven’t thought of the implications these looming budget cuts have for sports, you should have.

If you haven’t heard the calls for trimming athletic budgets, you soon will. If you think there are no implications for the track and field or cross country programs at your school, you’re probably wrong.

Perhaps many of you reading this piece wonder, “In the midst of this massive funding crisis, is there even a case to be made for continuing to invest in public school athletic programs?” And others of you are still wondering, “Is there really a funding crisis?”

The answer to both questions is a resounding, “Yes!” Allow me to give you a very abbreviated account of why the funding crisis faced by public education is real before proceeding to the main point of this editorial.

Schools were different a generation ago. Through legislative good intentions and pressure applied by an endless array of single-minded special interest groups, the mandates placed upon public education have blossomed like a rose growing in a manure pile. But, while all these burdens were being appended to the educational system nobody—no Republican, no Democrat, no independent—had the courage to increase taxes in keeping with the cost of the mandates. Neither did anyone have the courage to apply the brakes before the runaway train was out of control. We lived under the myth that we could do anything in education without regard to the cost.

We are now, however, staring at a mountain of educational entitlements that nobody, and I mean absolutely nobody, knows how to pay for. We want a Lexus educational experience on an entry-level domestic budget.

People like to point at the wastefulness of school administration. I will not try to tell you that there is no waste in school administration, but I will tell you that the layers of school administration you see are primarily an artifact of the bloating of educational mandates and entitlements over the preceding generation. Somebody has to oversee required programs, evaluate the additional personnel, and file the never-ending state reports. That sort of thing does not happen ex nihilo, though you would be tempted to think so when tracing the legislation that foisted these programs upon the schools sans funding.

That’s the short version of how we got into the mess we’re in. And almost all of us adults had a part in it—whether by omission of speaking up or commission of coming to the table banging our silverware for the state to fill, on the public’s dime, the platter of our particular special interest.

But, aren’t athletics just another special interest? Why shouldn’t athletic programs be gutted along with all the other programs schools had back in the day when the mission of the schools was determined more by local school boards than by federal and state legislation?

To be honest, some athletic program expenditures have been excessive. Athletics is not a sacred cow that should roam free of oversight and restraint. Waste in athletics should be no more immune from the budget-cutting axe than waste in any other area.

To be a little more specific, we don’t need more and more school sports (In fairness, it’s been a long time since CHSAA added sanctioning of any new sports.). We especially don’t need more school sports where the gatekeeper is an unforgiving fellow who goes by the name of Affluence. We don’t need more school sports that leave a legacy of brain injuries.

We don’t need more classifications, the proliferation of which inevitably leads to increased travel and end-of-season playoff costs. If anything, we need fewer classifications. We don’t need ever-more-inclusive playoff brackets which increase costs for all schools so that a few more schools can get blown out in the opening round.

That said, athletics are adding critical value to the secondary education experience in a way that almost nothing else in the entire educational enterprise is even remotely approaching. Allow me to explain.

The single most damning indictment of the mess our educational system is in is that almost all of the expensive accretions we’ve taken on in the last generation have come, at least in part, under the guise of helping our nation to stay competitive in the global economy. Yet, we have simultaneously worked overtime to erase every vestige of competition from the lives of public school students.

As incongruous as it sounds, we want our schools to be competitive, but not our students.

Except in athletics.

Outside of the world of sport, “competition” is a dirty word in education. 

In place of competition, we give out ‘A’ grades like they were candy. In order to affirm as many people as possible, it’s now common to see graduations with 20 or more “valedictorians.”

If you’re a parent, try getting your school’s counseling office to part with your son’s or daughter’s class rank.

If you’re a teacher growing weary of the day-to-day grind, try handing back your next set of tests in grade order (Note: For those inclined to read too much into that last statement, I’m not advocating that as a procedure for handing back tests. I am merely using a rhetorical device to illustrate that having a classroom where competition is known to live and breathe—even if only on life support—is one great way to be shown the door.).

We too-enthusiastically applaud anything that looks like it might have involved some effort at some point, but we make certain nobody is subjected to the suggestion their work could have been better if they’d put the same effort into it that their more motivated peer did.

Except in athletics.

We worry about the job prospects for those who don’t complete high school, so we make sure we do everything possible to make sure as many people as possible get a high school diploma. Never mind that this very policy undoes any competitive advantages that attached to a high school diploma in former days when nobody frothed at the mouth each time a student dropped out of school. From a competitive standpoint, it is desirable that students persevere toward getting a(n undiluted) high school diploma; it is undesirable that the educational establishment does most of the persevering for them.

In real life, there are success and failures. There are real successes and real failures because the very possibility of the former requires the possibility of the latter. But in the classroom, as a teaching friend of mine recently expressed it, “I’m supposed to exhaust every personal and professional resource to see that they get a 59.5%.” He should count himself fortunate that he does not teach in a building where the expectation is that he exhausts every personal and professional resource to see that they get a 69.5%.

Do you suppose any of these students ever pick up on the idea that we will exhaust every personal and professional resource to see that they get a passing mark in every class required for graduation? Do you further suppose any students might be tempted to leverage that little bit of knowledge? It might be prudent to stop and ask what kind of message we’re sending. Whatever message it sends—and I can imagine numerous possibilities—it’s unlikely to be the right message.

Exactly where does this preoccupation with making sure no student fails any course, nor deals at length with any disappointment that threatens to derail progress toward a diploma, find its parallels in a competitive global economy?

And where do we do anything to prepare our students for anything remotely resembling the competitive jungle they will face when they have their high school diploma and are competing with highly motivated people (most of whom are willing to work for less than we are) from six different continents for every job that pays a living wage?

Wait for it. I have the answer… it’s in athletics!

It is in the realm of sport we learn that the real world keeps, and publishes, the score of the game. It is in sport we learn that if we invest little or nothing into the activity, we a) get cut, b) get miniscule amounts of playing time, or c) finish at the back of the race.

It is in sport we learn there is no calculus by which the number of winners can ever equal the number of participants.*

It is in sport we learn that the rewards we seek may take months, or even years, to attain. And those rewards often arrive only at the end of a long trail of disappointments and setbacks.

It is in sport we learn that, for all the real benefits of teamwork, nobody can do the hard work of training for me.

It is in sport that we learn if we continue to outwork the competition, and continue to outthink the competition, we will eventually prevail over the competition. And vice versa.

Finally, it is in the world of sport that we come face-to-face with the truth of the proverb:

A little sleep, a little slumber,
   a little folding of the hands to rest complacency--
   and poverty defeat will come on you like a thief
   and scarcity like an armed man.

We aren’t teaching any of this, at least not in any systematic and institutional sort of way, anywhere else in public education.

So, the next time someone tells you we are spending too much on athletics, you may want to remind the individual of all that athletics accomplish that isn’t being accomplished elsewhere in public education.

* - It is equally true, however, that, even in the midst of competition, winning isn’t the only thing. My experience as a coach reminds me that the fully-invested young man who runs 26:00 for cross country often gains more from the adventure than the one who runs 16:00. Great competition yields countless victories that never show up in the “wins” column.