I don’t want to write this post because it’s, frankly, sad, serious, and it makes me angry. But it’s timely and it’s on my mind, so I will.
We went to The Boy’s Beech high school team basketball banquet. During the three and a half hour ceremony (!), I noticed something.
My high school in Maryland is very similar to Beech high school, actually. They are both out in the nearly-rural area outside of a suburban area outside of a metropolitan area surrounding a city. They are both big sports schools: theirs is football and basketball, ours was football and wrestling. Both have a bit of a country flair to them - getting your license and learning to drive on the backroads, Friday night football games being the place to be, referring to going to the grocery store as "driving to town," hanging out at the Ma and Pop store.
Yet there is one distinct difference: the kids.
These kids are genuinely nice, polite, respectful, and caring. The head coach, Coach Joines (my, he has the thickest Southern accent I’ve ever heard - the Boy is "Coach Ha-oooolmmes"), touched on their basketball abilities, but spent most of his time describing their character. Each had a story. Their star player organized pickup games to help the younger players with their skills. When Coach Joines told the senior boy with shaggy hair a junior player was taking his place as starter, his response was "good. He earned it." The junior in the Boy’s Spanish class who is too shy to talk to girls gave up numerous shots to pass to his teammates. Every time they were spoken of as players, the description of these kids was summed up by, "he is an upstanding young man."
I asked the Boy if this was at all true - weren’t people exaggerating for the parents? These kids aren’t selfless saints who never swear, right?
Apparently, yes. Sure, they can be immature and therefore pains in the butt, but all in all, they really are genuinely good kids.
Okay, maybe they swear. But under their breath.
The same cannot be said with the jocks I graduated with.
In my high school, we had similar award ceremonies praising kids who had contributed to our school, mostly in the form of points scored. Similarly, our star athletes were praised and considered "upstanding young men." In my school, however, this was furthest from the truth.
Take our wrestling team.
The wrestling team had formed a group known throughout the school as the "Ruff Ryders" (yes, after the DMX song). The Ruff Ryders took their name from their favorite pastime, which they dubbed ruff ryding. Ruff ryding basically meant kidnapping a younger girl, usually a freshmen, on the pretext of taking her to a party/to the liquor store/to get slurpees, driving them to a remote location in their four-wheel Jeep and presenting her with this proposition - you don’t know where you are and you are miles from civilization in the woods at night. Provide us with *something* or we’ll leave you here.
Keep in mind these expeditions usually involved 3 members of the wrestling team and 1 or 2 girls.
3 members of the wrestling team.
You can argue all you want about how she should have known better, etc., and I agree for the most part. But…come on. "Want to get slurpees at 7-Eleven?" That doesn’t immediately trigger the red flags, especially for a freshman girl just trying to hang out with the cool kids. And yes, apparently this happened on multiple occasions.
At the time of my graduation, three members of the wrestling team - the top three, at that - were tagged as the leaders of this group. At least one was facing sexual assault charges (so obviously the administration was aware of his behavior).
The charges were dropped and the freshman girl who had pressed them completely ostracized, to the point she had to switch to a different school.
The wrestling team all got full rides to great colleges.
Needless to say, I don’t tend to look at high school sports with…a lot of nostalgia.
The Duke lacrosse player situation doesn’t add warm fuzzy feelings either.
Granted, I’m not a student at Beech, so I don’t know all of what goes on at this high school. But let’s just say from my observations I highly doubt it.
This isn’t to say that all high school jocks are like this - by no means. Witness my experience watching the Beech basketball team.
So what’s the cause of all this? Is it parental involvement? Is it the fact that you can talk about God in school? I honestly think it’s the Need to Win.
In my high school, winning is everything. It’s part of DC culture, I think. In some ways it’s a very good thing - it drives you, it gets things done. But in other ways, winning, getting into the best school, getting higher SAT scores, owning a bigger McMansion with a bigger home theatre room (and a 20′ X 25′ bonus room!)…it’s harmful to kids. They don’t look at others as teammates, in basketball or wrestling or life, but as things to step over to get what they want.
This calls into question a choice I will have to make in 10-15 years when I start to have little basketball players.
(Why can’t they be little knitters or little chess players? Sigh. I suppose The Boy won’t have it.)
My Maryland high school is in one of the richest counties in the United States. Our school, apparently, has generous funding. Apparently, getting an education from my school means getting an education from one of the best high schools in the country. I made sure to point this out on my college applications and I’m sure it played a part in my getting into college.
Beech high school is a good school as well, with high parental involvement and decent funding. I doubt, however, it has as much money (and therefore in college admission minds, the equivalent education quality).
I definitely want the best education for my kids, of course. Who wouldn’t? But I’m sorry…I’d much rather my kids hung out with Beech basketball players.
Really, is this even a choice? Who would want to expose their kids to that kind of culture, where being a, well, piece of crap, is not only cool, it gets you praise?
Nope, I’m sorry. I’d much rather my kids gave up points to learn how to cooperate than get a bunch of trophies. Or a bunch of notches on their belts (!).
Yes, I’m saying I’d rather have my kids suck at sports and be stupid.
At least they’ll grow up to be decent human beings.
