Lack of Participation in High School Sports

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Re: Lack of Participation in High School Sports

Postby footballchicken » Sun Feb 19, 2012 12:43 pm

It's pretty simple. Comes down to the parents and the community support. Some small towns just do not have parents that are go-getters and would rather complain than send their kids to camps and support them. If the tradition has been "poor us, we are small and never win" then its going to take a lot to get out of that mentality. But for the above mentioned schools, they have always had the attitude of striving to succeed which is also hard to break. Tradition and parent involvement are the keys to participation and successful programs at the B level in ND.
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Re: Lack of Participation in High School Sports

Postby defensewinsgames » Tue Feb 21, 2012 1:11 am

Parent involvement can't over come talent. I agree that it is a huge part of it but if a team is lacking in talent it doesn't matter. Some of the most dedicated parents around end up supporting losing teams because they lack a little more talent than others. I do agree it helps I just don't believe it is the deciding factor.
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Re: Lack of Participation in High School Sports

Postby B-oldtimer » Tue Feb 21, 2012 12:46 pm

Parental involvement only can help so much in keeping a program going. I being from smaller school that coops with other schools our commitment i beleive is much more than alot of parents from larger schools would realize. First is getting your children to and from practices eveyday. In these coops you have practices held at each of other coop schools which is only fair. But our kids spend 1/2 hr. each way for busing just to get to practice thats if roads are good and everything works out just fine. Now add in 2hrs of practice plus half hour or so for kids to shower and now you are at 3 1/2hrs from when school gets out. This puts us getting home from practice between 7 to 7.30 for supper. Now if you have boy and girl this means you double this because you have no day that some one isn't home late from practice. We have Friends in other small schools where you add in lack gym space and now you have kids practicing late and early before school and your day gets to be really long day. This doesn't include weekend practices, taking them to various camps, and now add in traveling teams. This is real commitment by families for activity because you add in games when is there family time. Now this is just for basketball now add in football, baseball, volleyball, and track or say golf. This commitment also goes for other activities like music, speech
various student organizations because being of small town school if youre going to have these activities it takes participation by nearly everyone to have these activities. I as parent have enjoyed these activities but don't tell me that its lack of parental involvement. Our school hasn't seen alot of winning in number of years like say the Grafton's, Carrington"s, Centeral Cass, Dickson Trinities, Minot Ryan, Stanley or like a lot of top tear schools in Class B last 5 to 10 years. It is kind of ironic though when these schools not so long ago were class A they were complaining that couldn't compete because of their size with the larger schools
and were tired of getting beat up by these larger schools.

Now to Argument that some of these small schools that are competing with larger schools like North Star, and Dakota prarie. Yes they are in smaller rank of schools but if you look across ND they are probalbly at
mean point that they are about midpoint in size between largest and smallest school. Also like alot of small class b schools every so often town is gifted with run of really good atheletes over short period of
time. I would like for you follow these towns or teams in near future when this run of athletes is done they will become like rest of the pack trying to compete year in year out with very largest class b schools.

The NDhsaa has had problem of what to do with large class b schools because of their number and distance apart and political battle of what to do with them. My thought has been we need more participation so the large
class A schools should have JV program like say freshman and Sophmores compete competively with these
schools that are divided up into regions and they compete for state championship. This tournament could either be dove tailed to smaller Class b or larger Class A. Also if these larger Class B School still wanted to
compete with smaller Class b schools let like Class A have JV program that could compete down at the Class b level. Also both the class A and B schools with split levels should be running Jv teams for each of
levels. This would mean for all larger schools number of teams to play on would be double adding to participation of students in the sports. I can hear all sorts or reasons for something like this not to work but truly if goal actiivities association and schools to get participation up i think this would be postive way of doing this. Yes its going to take more of finacial burden on larger schools but proportionally it will not be that small class b schools are doing now. Also its going to require more parental involvement from larger school than they have now. I also think its going to increase participation at the small class b schools too when kids feel they have chance to compete. If we stay status co with this yes things will look fine but we will continue slide with even lower participation levels and less interest until gate and tv revenues are both lost and now we don't have revenue source to help fund some of other activities. We are coming to this in near future i beleive because the younger generation haven't grown up with enthusiasm we had for basketball and in the numbers. I beleive this interest was created by every school had fair shot at getting to big dance. I think some plan like i have stated is needed to not put the schools against each other but some how expanding the pie where all students, schools, and the public are winners. I willing to bet there are alot of other ideas out there too if were willing to think out the box. Football came to this a few years
ago of dividing up classes may not be perfect and still probalbly needs work but they did try something.
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Re: Lack of Participation in High School Sports

Postby B-oldtimer » Tue Feb 21, 2012 12:47 pm

Parental involvement only can help so much in keeping a program going. I being from smaller school that coops with other schools our commitment i beleive is much more than alot of parents from larger schools would realize. First is getting your children to and from practices eveyday. In these coops you have practices held at each of other coop schools which is only fair. But our kids spend 1/2 hr. each way for busing just to get to practice thats if roads are good and everything works out just fine. Now add in 2hrs of practice plus half hour or so for kids to shower and now you are at 3 1/2hrs from when school gets out. This puts us getting home from practice between 7 to 7.30 for supper. Now if you have boy and girl this means you double this because you have no day that some one isn't home late from practice. We have Friends in other small schools where you add in lack gym space and now you have kids practicing late and early before school and your day gets to be really long day. This doesn't include weekend practices, taking them to various camps, and now add in traveling teams. This is real commitment by families for activity because you add in games when is there family time. Now this is just for basketball now add in football, baseball, volleyball, and track or say golf. This commitment also goes for other activities like music, speech
various student organizations because being of small town school if youre going to have these activities it takes participation by nearly everyone to have these activities. I as parent have enjoyed these activities but don't tell me that its lack of parental involvement. Our school hasn't seen alot of winning in number of years like say the Grafton's, Carrington"s, Centeral Cass, Dickson Trinities, Minot Ryan, Stanley or like a lot of top tear schools in Class B last 5 to 10 years. It is kind of ironic though when these schools not so long ago were class A they were complaining that couldn't compete because of their size with the larger schools
and were tired of getting beat up by these larger schools.

Now to Argument that some of these small schools that are competing with larger schools like North Star, and Dakota prarie. Yes they are in smaller rank of schools but if you look across ND they are probalbly at
mean point that they are about midpoint in size between largest and smallest school. Also like alot of small class b schools every so often town is gifted with run of really good atheletes over short period of
time. I would like for you follow these towns or teams in near future when this run of athletes is done they will become like rest of the pack trying to compete year in year out with very largest class b schools.

The NDhsaa has had problem of what to do with large class b schools because of their number and distance apart and political battle of what to do with them. My thought has been we need more participation so the large
class A schools should have JV program like say freshman and Sophmores compete competively with these
schools that are divided up into regions and they compete for state championship. This tournament could either be dove tailed to smaller Class b or larger Class A. Also if these larger Class B School still wanted to
compete with smaller Class b schools let like Class A have JV program that could compete down at the Class b level. Also both the class A and B schools with split levels should be running Jv teams for each of
levels. This would mean for all larger schools number of teams to play on would be double adding to participation of students in the sports. I can hear all sorts or reasons for something like this not to work but truly if goal actiivities association and schools to get participation up i think this would be postive way of doing this. Yes its going to take more of finacial burden on larger schools but proportionally it will not be that small class b schools are doing now. Also its going to require more parental involvement from larger school than they have now. I also think its going to increase participation at the small class b schools too when kids feel they have chance to compete. If we stay status co with this yes things will look fine but we will continue slide with even lower participation levels and less interest until gate and tv revenues are both lost and now we don't have revenue source to help fund some of other activities. We are coming to this in near future i beleive because the younger generation haven't grown up with enthusiasm we had for basketball and in the numbers. I beleive this interest was created by every school had fair shot at getting to big dance. I think some plan like i have stated is needed to not put the schools against each other but some how expanding the pie where all students, schools, and the public are winners. I willing to bet there are alot of other ideas out there too if were willing to think out the box. Football came to this a few years
ago of dividing up classes may not be perfect and still probalbly needs work but they did try something.
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Re: Lack of Participation in High School Sports

Postby defensewinsgames » Wed Feb 22, 2012 1:00 am

B old-timer, you hit the nail perfectly on the head. I couldn't have said it ant better, the winningest teams in class b, the ones competing for bids to state every year are the bigger schools. Small schools often have the same level of dedication as large schools, they just have half the population to choose from, plus their athletes are involved in everything. I agree with you on the teams that moved down from class a. It isn't fun being on the getting beat down end but when you are the ones doing the owning it seems to be forgotten pretty fast.
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