National Federation of State High School Associations Executive Director Dr. Karissa L. Niehoff wrote a very poignant editorial piece addressing the changing dynamics that high-school sports on a national level have experienced with COVID-19.
Her editorial was thought-provoking, and the piece did its job: It got you to think.
What came to mind after reading her editorial, “From Masks to Transfers Across States, High School Sports Have Different Look,” was William Gates and Arthur Agee.
Gates and Agee were the stars of a mid-’90s documentary, “Hoop Dreams.”
The main idea behind the series was a blue-collar, Chicago-based family trying to give Gates and Agee, two teenagers at the time, a better life through sports because sports was the best vehicle for two teenagers to escape the dangerous streets of Chicago.
Sometimes, when sports is the only vehicle you have out of a vicious cycle of poverty, you do what it takes, and that family sacrificed everything to give their two boys a chance at a better life.
Niehoff’s letter addressed athletically-motivated transfers, which are probably more difficult to prove now that high schools on the national level have postponed athletic competitions.
She pointed out in her letter the bleak reality of making it in collegiate athletics: Only 2% of high-school participants get to play at the collegiate level.
The letter didn’t specify whether those statistics were all-encompassing and included the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, the National Junior College Athletic Association and the National Christian Athletic Association, to name just a few athletic associations outside of the National Collegiate Athletic Association.
Niehoff wrote the following: “Although there are a limited number — less than 2% — of high-school students who will play at the college level, the majority will not. The uprooting of an entire family to move to another state with the uncertainty of whether COVID-19 might eventually delay or cancel sports in that state, along with the uncertainty of such a move impacting scholarship offers, seems short-sighted. We suggest families consider the bigger picture and remain invested in education-based activities in their school and community.”
Niehoff is correct that the majority of these families that transfer for reasons athletically motivated will not get to see their sons or daughters perform at the college level.
Parents tend to ignore the odds, especially if it involves providing their children with better lives, and regardless of the odds, sometimes a parent just does what he or she has to do. Uprooting their kid into another school system to try to generate an athletic scholarship, whether its private high school, public high school or college, is just one of those things.
The primary motivation for many parents making these athletically-motivated moves is escaping the cycle of poverty.
That is what Gates and Agee aimed to do in the brutal world of Chicago, which is even darker and more sinister now than it was when they were teenagers.
No longer do athletes get the “hooper’s pass” and protection from gangs. They are just as susceptible to the senseless violence of the streets as any other kid.
Sports have become so ingrained in our culture it is hard for parents to look at the big picture Niehoff is referencing in her letter.
Sometimes a dream is all a parent or kid has, and regardless of the bleak statistics, they will use the resources necessary to facilitate it.
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Jason Blasco, reporter, can be reached at 245-0437 or jblasco@thegardenisland.com.
