It's No Longer Fun and Games

School Administrator, Nov, 1998

If we asked you to list the top 25 issues you face on your job, it's not likely you would include any reference to interscholastic athletes. It might not even make the Top 50. So why is it that this month's issue of The School Administrator (one of the largest we've produced) deals comprehensively with the subject of sports?

While most superintendents and their deputies do not play any day-to-day role in managing the athletics program, there may be no aspect of the local school district that carries more emotional baggage and headache potential than the world of after-school fun and games.

Consider the topics we are addressing here: athletic eligibility of students, gender equity, funding, the growing pressure of home-schoolers (and the new challenge of charter school students), legal risks, sportsmanship and the role of middle school sports. These are substantive and weighty issues, which taken as a whole suggest that school system leaders ought to be well-versed in the administrative aspects of interscholastic play.

One state association director in the Midwest recently told me that these are "such a continually hot topic" in his state that nearly any superintendent could speak from experience about dealing with athletics. Meanwhile, a superintendent in upstate New York described how a school board asked her during a job interview what she would do about parent interference in varsity sports.

One could draw a striking parallel here to what has befallen intercollegiate sports. Over the last decade or more, campus presidents largely maintained a hands-off, blinders-on approach to the running of their university's sports program, leading today to serious and deep-seated woes that defy easy solutions.

We hope our coverage will encourage you to ask informed questions of those you've entrusted to run your district's interscholastic athletics program.

Jay P. Goldman

Voice: 703-875-0745

E-mail:jgoldman@aasa.org