"As The Planet Hoops" Basketball Newsletter

I think you will find this article today very informative and somewhat disturbing. Please enjoy.

Todays article is from the Star Tribune newspaper out of Minneapolis/St.Paul Minnesota.

StarTribune.com

A changing culture

High school athletics are far from immune to the ever-present "win now" pressure.

Last update: January 17, 2008 - 11:12 PM

A high school girls' basketball coach feels compelled to attend a tournament for fifth-grade teams. Not because a niece or neighbor is playing, but because the fifth-grader's parents are "recruiting" high school coaches as they decide where to send their daughter.

People see the two sons of a high school wrestling coach, a man who wrestled for the Gophers, and they say things like, "They're getting scholarships; are they going to wrestle for the U?" His sons are not yet past first grade.

Young hockey players say goodbye to their high school friends and leave home in the hope that playing a more intense schedule of games will improve their chances for a college scholarship and a pro contract ... parents openly criticize high school coaches ... participation fees continue to rise ... seasons overlap and families struggle to find time to be together.

There are many issues facing high school sports. In order to put them in perspective, the Star Tribune invited eight people -- athletic directors, coaches, parents and student-athletes -- to sit down for a casual, frank discussion.

The group met in a conference room at the Star Tribune earlier this month and, over pizza and soft drinks, talked for more than two hours. The topics included finances and fees, youth sports and club sports, pressure and specialization.

Beginning today and continuing for two more Fridays, we are presenting excerpts from the conversation. The results are interesting as well as enlightening.

JOHN MILLEA • JMILLEA@STARTRIBUNE.COM

Faith Patterson: I was called today by someone who said, "You've got to come see my fifth-grade daughter. You need to be here." I couldn't believe it, never in my lifetime. If I go watch a game, it's always been to support my kids. Until recently, because "this is what everybody's doing." I've got nieces that are playing in sixth grade and I just went to go see my niece play one time this summer, and everybody thought, "Oh, here she is recruiting." No, I'm just here watching my niece play.

But you see all these other coaches and some of these kids have been at these coaches' homes, and the coaches have been in their homes. And it's like, my goodness this is ridiculous.

So I went there and I saw seven high school coaches there. And I just could not believe it. I really think it's starting to get pretty bad. Some of the parents will say, "Such and such coach has been in my house. Such and such has been talking to me, and they're saying she could be varsity, get a college scholarship."

Matt Thuli: I'm in the same situation you are. I want to go watch a kid I know play, a kid who lives across the street. He's a fourth-grader who thinks I'm kind of cool because I'm a basketball coach and I want to go watch him because he's from down the road, and [people think] I'm in there because I'm recruiting. No, I'm watching this kid.

And then I have a son who's into hockey and I walk into an ice arena, and it's, "What are you doing here?" "I'm here for my son, the one with 'Thuli' across the jersey." You're going to watch your niece, I'm going to watch my neighbor, and we're perceived as recruiters.

Billy Pierce: I think [parents are] recruiting programs, saying, "You've got to come watch this fifth-grader."

Matt Thuli: And with some programs, everybody says they're doing it, too, but kids are going there because they're good, and it's not the coach's fault. They want to play there because you're good. I hope and believe that everybody's doing it the right way, that we're not putting pressure on a fifth-grade kid about where they're going to high school.

Travis Baker: Our coaches for football stress going to youth games and not being there to obviously recruit or anything like that but being there to help the team and support the team. Even though it's not our intent to make these kids think about high school sports and things like that, they are, and they want to be you and they want to be you as soon as they can.

Caitlin Rowland: I go to Hopkins and recruitment is a word that's thrown around a lot with both the boys' and the girls' [basketball] programs. Actually I transferred over to Hopkins in seventh grade, I played for Eden Prairie before, and I know for a fact that [Hopkins girls' basketball coach Brian Cosgriff] wasn't at any of my fifth-grade or sixth-grade tournaments recruiting me. We had a lot of girls transfer to the program, and I know that they weren't recruited.

Billy Pierce: I feel bad for my own sons because there's already pressure on them, not by me, but people see my kids and say, "They're getting a scholarship. Are they going to wrestle for the U?" This happened two years ago, when one of them wasn't even in kindergarten and one was in first grade.

I just love the innocence of it. My first-grader, yesterday he was out wrestling a kid and he's trying to pull on his [opponent's] head and he's just looking at me smiling. You don't smile in wrestling, but there he is having the time of his life, and the innocence of that. But automatically there's pressure, "Dad wrestled in college and they're automatically going to college to wrestle."

I was talking with our hockey coach; he's a first-year coach, he's a Forest Lake grad and he's scared to death that in five years there won't be high school hockey because of the junior leagues. They're playing 70 games to their 30, and he's a young guy, fresh out of college and he just wants to coach high school hockey. It's kind of like the AAU thing; they're getting noticed by the colleges, and not just colleges but the pro scouts.

Al Frost: Well, that's where the parents got hooked on AAU basketball. Because they'd come to a parent and they'd say, "Hey, I can guarantee your kid a scholarship."

Jim Skelly: That question of will athletes skip high school sports for club sports, I think hockey is the best example of that. My son is a senior in high school and we watched one of his friends on YouTube, because he plays for the Green Bay Gamblers in the USHL. He was in a fight and we're watching this on YouTube and he's a senior in high school and I cannot believe what I'm seeing.

He achieved his goal because he got a college scholarship to Wisconsin, which is a great thing, but ... I think it goes back to kind of the base question: Are you doing this activity for yourself or are you doing it to be part of something bigger? Are you doing it to play with your friends and for your family and represent your community and gain some well-rounded perspective on life, or are you doing it for other reasons?

For me, that's what the club sport battle personifies: your team or yourself?

Al Frost: We may not see high school sports in 20 or 30 years; it will be club sports. But what about these kids who can't afford the club sports?

Caitlin Rowland: I think the AAU driving force for a lot of kids is for the college scholarship. But also, I know a couple of girls on my AAU team who play in their high school season and they're head and shoulders above a lot of their teammates and a lot of the girls they play against. So AAU provides them a nice opportunity to play against people at the same ability level.

And what I liked about it was playing against these girls in high school and against them in traveling, you get to think, "Oh that person's such a jerk, and I don't like them, and they're mean." And then you get to play with them in the AAU and you find out, "Hey, they're a really nice person." Q What other pressures do athletes and coaches face?

Caitlin Rowland: People pressure you to be on varsity or be in the starting lineup or get a college scholarship. I know a lot of my friends get pressure from their parents, and you can see that at the end of the game they're trying to get their stats up to try and impress the coach.

Travis Baker: I know everyone wants to win, but I don't know if that pressure to win is necessarily the most pressure that's there. Pressure to do your best is there, and I feel like athletes are putting more pressure on themselves maybe than anyone else is.

Our school hasn't been a powerhouse in anything except marching band for a while. But you'll see kids that have always been on the bubble just kind of dwindle away as you go from youth, and then you get to high school and you've left even more.

You ask, "How's this kid now, how's his attitude changed, how has his work ethic changed?" And do you regret the decision to drop out because you were on the bubble? So I think there's pressure, I think you feel pressure when you're on the bubble and a lot of kids are scared almost to kind of take that extra step.

Matt Thuli: I think there is some pressure on coaches to win. I'm in that dual role as a coach as well [as athletic director], and I feel some pressure to win and I know that coaches under me feel pressure. It is hard because you respond to an e-mail and you respond to them personally and you don't want to discuss what's "wrong" with a coach.

You want to tell them, "Look at what they're doing for your son or daughter. They're a stand-up person and they're a family person themselves, and the kids respect them. They're teaching life skills." But unfortunately it's not always that way because somebody's got to win, somebody's got to lose, and everybody wants to win.

Joni Sichting: I want my kids to learn that winning is not the end-all to the experience. Yes, we want to win but I don't pick apart coaches. I live with a coach. I just try to respect their decisions, but I do really look for that level of integrity and teaching them the right things about life.

As far as winning and losing, I do agree the pressure is on the coaches a lot because parents go nuts. They lose perspective. Maybe they just want something more out of it for their child, or maybe they can't see the whole picture and they're just looking at how it affects their son and daughter and their future. I don't know what the answer is to that.

Jim Skelly: It could be that they've invested so much time and money and going to all these games and events.

Joni Sichting: I think we've all seen kids who have talked about some of their friends who they think are under more pressure because their parents put them under pressure.

Jim Skelly: I think there are different pressures on each athlete. As kids you can have judgment passed on you, and I think that's where the pressure comes in. Because it's all about judgment, and a lot of people making the judgment don't have the history that the parents have; they've watched them the last five, six, seven, eight, nine years.

And now you have a high school coach with a fresh set of eyes who's seeing something different. And the parent may not agree with the judgment of the coach, and it creates a stress situation, right or wrong. But that's why the coach is there, to make that judgment. Because we trust them to make the right judgment, and sometimes that's where the problem happens, when that tough decision has to be made.

Faith Patterson: Being at North and having great coaches around me, we created that type of winning. And I felt kind of blessed because we worked hard, but I can't just pull championships out of my pocket.

And there is pressure in the community. [When the team isn't winning], you walk down the street and someone's saying something, and people are whispering and they're watching to see how I handle it all, to see if I feel like a loser now. And the saddest part of it is we never set out with expectations to win, we just set out to be the best we could be.

That's our message. As coaches we are here to help kids with a work ethic and a sense of self-worth and discipline to be able to just go out and be successful. But because of the community and that hype, seeing the team on the television, now everybody wants to be a part of it. They want to be great, they want to be recognized, they want to be a part of something.

Al Frost: I think that the whole thing is a societal thing, win at all costs, and we're killing kids.

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