Portland St. Patrick Catholic School

    As an administrator and a coach, I often hear comments from people who think schools “take sports way too seriously.”  By questioning the individuals who make those comments, I have learned that while some are against school sports in general, many more are only against the idea of winning at all cost.  That’s a fair concern, considering what we see in the media about professional athletes.

    However, you don’t have to be a coach to realize that there are many, many benefits to having well-run athletic departments in our schools.  If a school’s curriculum is the infrastructure of the education that our students will obtain while under our guidance, how does our athletic program support that mission?  What are the benefits of sports in our schools?  There are many:

• The opportunity for student athletes to represent their school gives them a sense of belonging and importance.  It gives them a sense of pride in their school and in one another.  Students will cultivate friendships on the field, court, or track that will last a lifetime as will the stories they share about the good old days.

• Sports can bring a school community together as they cheer on their teams or come together for other reasons.  Potterville High School suffered some devastating losses this fall, with the deaths of a student and a parent.  The school community has rallied around their football and volleyball teams to help them cope with these tragedies.

• Students who play sports are encouraged to excel in the classroom.  All schools have an academic eligibility policy as does the Michigan High School Athletic Association (MHSAA).  There are minimum academic requirements students must meet in order to be eligible for participation.  Oftentimes, marginal students are required to put in extra hours in the classroom to remain eligible.

• According to the President’s Council on Physical Fitness, school sports provide exercise and healthy habits which carry over to their everyday life.  Students who participate in sports spend fewer hours in front of the television and video games than their peers who do not participate in sports. Students who play sports are less likely to use tobacco, alcohol, and other illegal drugs, belong to a gang, become pregnant, have low self-esteem or become depressed.  Student athletes also miss fewer days of school.  One recent study even suggested that kids who participate in sports are less likely to develop osteoporosis later in life.

• Students learn teamwork, fair play, sportsmanship, healthy competition and a strong work ethics from school sports.  This year our 7th/8th grade football team has only 11 players.  They have played hard every Sunday for the past six weeks against much larger teams.  Though they haven’t enjoyed a victory on the scoreboard, each week they have walked off the field as winners.  No one needs to tell these young men about teamwork, perseverance and resilience, for they personify these gifts.

• Unfortunately, as schools across the state struggle with budgets, many sports programs are being reduced and students are being charged increasingly larger amounts to participate.  Many students no longer have the opportunity to participate in athletics.  We are so fortunate at St. Pat’s to have our Athletic Association, whose entire mission is to raise the money that is necessary to give our young Shamrocks those opportunities.  Over the past two years, we have bucked another trend and have actually added programs for our students.

    We do take sports seriously at St. Pat’s as we are serious about the overall development of our students.