LET THEM ALL PLAY

Those on Middle and High School Teams Tend to Be Healthier and Less
Troubled. So Why Should Anyone Be Cut?

In Naples, Fla., late last month, the White House director of
national drug policy visited Barron Collier High School to announce
the awarding of $8.6 million in federal grants for random drug
testing of middle and high school students across the country. The
local Collier County school system will use $209,662 to test 3,000
athletes and cheerleaders.

"The real credit to this school and this district is it didn't wait
for somebody to die," John Walters, head of the Office of National
Drug Control Policy, was quoted as saying in the Fort Myers
News-Press. "I congratulate these young people for being pioneers in
a revolution in the way in which we deal with substance abuse."

This is the latest initiative in what has become a leading priority
for the Bush administration: to increase drug screening inside
schools. But the money would be better spent on programs that will
allow many more students to be on school sports teams. That is a sure
way to reduce drug use by teens. Every athlete who wants to play
interscholastic sports should have a team to play on.

High school sports began as a way to teach American values of
competition, sportsmanship and hard work to immigrants arriving on
our shores in great numbers in the early 1900s. Ironically, the
public high school sports model - one first-year team, one sub
varsity, one varsity - came about as a way of creating enough roster
spots to accommodate all who wanted to play. Today, the number of
those who want to play far exceeds the finite number of spots, but
the sports model hasn't adapted to the times.

The common wisdom is that having sports tryouts and cuts is a good
thing, in that it prepares children for an adult world of winners and
losers. Getting cut "toughens up" and exposes children to the
disappointments and achievements that all of us experience in
adulthood. Many believe, with considerable justification, that a
child with a healthy self-image simply will find another
extracurricular activity in which he or she can excel.

Surely it is important for kids to learn the value of overcoming
obstacles with hard work and growing through failure, but being cut
from a sports team can be among the most traumatic events in a
teenager's life. One high school sophomore described it to me as like
being sucker-punched in the stomach.

In a cruel irony, the children who are cut, as the least skilled and
the least self-confident, are the very ones who would benefit most
from playing on a sports team, where they can learn the value of a
good work ethic and acting cooperatively toward a common goal. We
want to prepare children for adulthood by giving them a chance to
develop coping skills and the self-confidence needed to succeed in
the adult world in a safe and nurturing environment. Failure does not
build self-esteem.

Full inclusion would be especially beneficial to teenage boys by
providing them an outlet through sports for their aggression and a
place to connect socially with other boys. Numerous studies have
found a positive association between playing interscholastic sports
and an increase in the number of an athlete's friends who are
academically oriented. A study in 2002 in the journal Sociology of
Education also found that participation in interscholastic sports
"significantly increased social ties between students and parents,
students and the school, parents and the school, and parents and
parents ... and a reduction in illicit drug and alcohol use."

Full inclusion also would reap significant health benefits. Children
who are cut from teams do not exercise as frequently as they would if
they were playing sports and are more likely to spend afternoons
watching television, becoming obese and getting into trouble.
According to a February 2006 Gallup Youth Study, one in five teens is
overweight, with only 21 percent claiming to participate in sports or
recreation five to six days a week and only 19 percent participating
in vigorous sports or physical activity five to six days a week.

Even if we acknowledge all of these benefits, some will say that full
inclusion for middle and high school sports teams will cost too much
money and destroy interscholastic sports by making the vast majority
of teams extremely mediocre. Both issues are really not problematic.

Under full inclusion, teams would be added as necessary to meet
demand, even if it meant fielding two or three more teams. Every
athlete would practice, but only athletes in good academic standing
and with no disciplinary problems would qualify to play in games.
After a coach started such a lacrosse program in one Canadian high
school, attendance and graduation rates improved dramatically while
the crime, drug and alcohol abuse, and suicide rate among
participating teens declined sharply.

In fact, full inclusion would likely increase the chances that school
teams will be winners. Giving late bloomers a chance to finally
emerge enlarges the talent pool, so that high schools can field the
best possible varsity teams. As now, the most skilled players would
still get the bulk of the playing time, to ensure that teams stayed
competitive.

Teenagers have a pretty good idea of their own ability. The
lesser-skilled ones sooner or later either will self-cut or work
extra hard to try to compensate. Numerous studies and surveys
establish that many athletes are simply happy to be part of a team
and will continue participating even if they don't get to play, as is
the case with most who suit up for high school football games on
Friday nights in this country.

The extra teams could be funded, in part, through user fees. If 18
kids - the average size of a soccer team - paid $100 each, the $1,800
raised would be enough to pay for one coach. The rest of the
approximately $3,400 it costs to field a team of 36 or more could be
raised by booster clubs, from donations by local businesses or from
fundraising events organized by parents of the athletes, as is done
already across the country - including in places like East Islip,
Plainedge, Smithtown and Hampton Bays - to save endangered sports
programs. Government money now being spent on drug testing of
athletes could be redirected to fund more sports teams

As the most prominent of all high school extracurricular activities,
athletics continues to confer on its participants the highest levels
of status and prestige in our teenage culture. Eliminating cuts would
likely lessen the feeling by athletes that they are special and above
the rules, thus reducing bullying, hazing and the "jock culture" that
plague too many of the nation's high schools.

Full inclusion also would eliminate one of the principal reasons for
parental misbehavior in youth sports. If the nation's newspapers are
any guide, the just-concluded fall sports season was the most
troubled and violent youth sports season on record: In one two-day
span alone in late October, a father in Philadelphia allegedly pulled
a gun on his son's football coach because of a lack of playing time;
a father in Hawaii, upset because his son didn't play, punched the
coach; and hard feelings over playing time on a girl's softball team
erupted into a knock-down, drag-out fight between two St. Paul, Minn., dads.

Given the intense competition for limited roster spots, no wonder so
many parents in our winner-take-all society act in inappropriate
ways. Out-of-control parents are a symptom of the much larger
problem. If parents knew that their child would be able to play
middle and high school sports, even if only on a sub-varsity team,
they will be less likely to act out.

It makes no sense from a public health standpoint to continue the
cutting policy that contributes to an overall decline in physical
fitness among adolescents and young adults and does nothing to combat
drug use by keeping teens busy in after-school programs such as sports.