SportsLetter

And our HS football stadiums are especially big

In February of 2011 SportsLetter reported on the construction of a $60 million football stadium at Allen High School in Allen, Texas, an affluent suburb of Dallas.

Well, that stadium is finished and tonight Allen HS is ready to host last year's state champion Southlake Carroll, which is ranked No. 1 in The Associated Press' Class 5A preseason poll – seriously, a preseason poll -- according to the AP on SI.com.

The sparkling new Eagle Stadium sports 18,000 seats (including those for the 8,200 season ticket holders), a three-tiered press box, a 38-foot-wide high-definition video screen, an upper deck and corporate sponsors.

And while it's only the fifth largest high school stadium in the state, the New York Daily News reports that “it is the largest such venue to house a single team.”

Said Robert McSpadden, from a high school football website called, naturally, TexasBob.com,

"In a couple of years, someone's going to do something that's bigger and bigger."

Well, Odessa, Texas, (of "Friday Night Lights" fame) has a 19,000 seat stadium built in 1982.  Perhaps it's time for a new one.

Meanwhile, Carthage, Texas, just spent $750,000 for a 1,200 square-foot scoreboard supporters say might be the biggest high school scoreboard in the country.  As if it's important to keep track of such things.

Although, apparently it is.

Wes Wood, a former high-school football coach and current salesman for Nevco Inc., which installed Carthage's scoreboard, told the Wall Street Journal that,

He estimates that about 70% of his company's business in Texas is with high schools.

"It's a status symbol, you can't deny that," says Mr. Wood. "I can guarantee there's someone out there that is saying 'we can't let Carthage have the biggest in the nation.' "

Find this a little excessive?  A little over the top?  Oh, that’s right, you’re not from Texas.

Nationally ranked HS football teams ... really?

According to the recent National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) participation data there are 1,097,597 high school football players playing on 14,241 (11-player) high school football teams across the nation.

And USA TODAY High School Sports ranks Miami (FL) Central as the best team in the nation?  USA Today must have a lot of people watching a lot of high school games, a task made especially difficult given that some high school some teams have yet to play a game this season.

After years of a mostly media-manufactured "crisis" concerning the crowning of a national champion in NCAA Division I football are we as a nation going to have to suffer through an even more ridiculous debate over the annual Number 1 high school football team in the country?

Probably.

Let the weeping begin.

ESPN’S Football at a Crossroads

In a series that started yesterday, ESPN will present:

a weeklong, cross-platform series, "Football at a Crossroads." "Outside the Lines," "SportsCenter," ESPN.com, Grantland and ESPN The Magazine examine health issues surrounding football at all levels of the sport, from youth football, high school and college football, through semipro and professional football.

Tuesday's focus will be on youth and high school football but yesterday's "Outside the Lines" had information on a survey of interest to parents.

From ESPN:

About 57 percent of parents in an online public opinion survey of more than 1,000 people conducted by ESPN Research and the Global Strategy Group in early August said that recent stories about the increase in concussions in football have made them less likely to allow their sons to play in youth leagues.

The survey asked several questions about people's perception of injuries, specifically concussions, in the NFL, and how those opinions trickled down through all levels of the sport. Special emphasis was given to parents of boys younger than 15. About two-thirds of parents said concussions are a serious issue in youth football.

And:

MINIMUM AGE FOR TACKLE FOOTBALL

An ESPN survey asked respondents: In your opinion, what should the minimum age requirement be for kids to play full contact football?

Age	Total	Parents	NFL fans	Non-NFL fans
5-9	14%	20%	25%	10%
10-12	36%	41%	44%	33%
13-15	30%	24%	22%	28%
16-18	20%	15%	8%	29%

Overall HS sports participation up, football down

The National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) yesterday released its annual High School Athletics Participation Survey with the news that national high school sports participation had increased in 2011-12 to an all-time high of 7,692,520 participants – an increase of 24,565 from the previous year.

From the NFHS:

An additional 33,984 girls participated in high school sports last year, making the all-time record total 3,207,533. This also marks the 23rd consecutive year for an increase in the number of female participants. Outdoor track and field (468,747), basketball (435,885) and volleyball (418,903) continued to be the top three participatory sports for girls, with volleyball up 9,571 participants from 2010-11.

and

While girls participation continued to climb, boys participation figures dipped for the first time since the 1992-93 school year, down 9,419 from last year’s number of 4,494,406 to 4,484,987. Seven of the top 10 boys sports registered drops in participation, with 11-player football (1,095,993), outdoor track and field (575,628), basketball (535,289), wrestling (272,149), tennis (159,800), golf (152,725) and swimming and diving (133,823) all down from last year. Baseball (474,219), soccer (411,757) and cross country (248,494) all had increases from the previous year, with soccer registering the largest increase of 13,406.

The drop in football participation was noticed by LA Times writer Eric Sondheimer:

But there also were 12,448 fewer students playing football than the year before and 38 schools stopped playing the sport.

Could it be a sign of trouble brewing?

... Some speculate that all the focus on concussion dangers could be scaring parents and players. Others believe that the era of specialization, where athletes focus on a single sport year round, is taking away players that would have gone out for football. And the growth of lacrosse is giving football players a safer alternative.

Concussion training for HS football coaches

In August the LA84 Foundation offered free tackling clinics for Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) football coaches.  The clinics run by Bobby Hosea, founder of Train ‘Em Up Academy, taught coaches a tackling technique that significantly reduces head impact. 

This past Monday football coaches and athletic directors from the LAUSD participated in an advanced concussion training clinic, part of a state-mandated effort to help reduce concussion-related issues for student athletes.  In addition to the coaches and ADs, the clinic was attended by other LAUSD officials, former NFL players, professional wrestlers and rock star Billy Corgan of The Smashing Pumpkins, who is a board member for the Sports Legacy Institute.

From the Park Labrea News/ Beverly Press:

Chris Nowinski, the co-founder of the Sports Legacy Institute, which hosted the training, said the organization piloted the program in Chicago last year and trained more than 3,000 coaches. He also announced the creation of the California Concussion Coalition.

“We know we can do a better job combining services for our student athletes out there who are at risk for concussion,” Nowinski said. “There’s a lot of great programs out there in California, and we want to bring them together to work in partnership to make sure we’re giving these kids the best chance they have at succeeding on the field, and not have their careers shortened by concussions.”

And:

Though he is now a rock star, Corgan played sports in school and has been an avid Cubs fan for years. He has also started an independent wrestling federation called Resistance Pro, which is the first wrestling organization to have an open concussion policy.

“As a former student-athlete, I’m very sensitive to the issue of what it takes for a kid to have the courage to say, ‘I’m hurt.’ Back in my day, if you hurt your knee, they sit you on the sidelines. If you hurt your head, they send you right back in the game. And if you didn’t want to go back, the [coaches] said you weren’t tough,” Corgan said.

He said the issue of concussions is resulting in cultural change, and he praised the coaches in attendance for taking time out of their practices to discuss and learn about the topic.

“You’re going to save lives and affect lives in ways you probably don’t realize,” Corgan added.

Some Little League WS players are missing school

Well, if wall-to-wall ESPN coverage, the live streaming of games and a site devoted to stats and a videos of your favorite players (complete with a Baseball Factory Scouting Report) weren't enough to convince some folks that the Little League Baseball World Series has entered the realm of big-time sports maybe this will:  some kids are missing the start of school to play.

To be fair, the Little League Baseball World Series usually is held the end of summer --- otherwise known as August.  Some school systems around the country, including World Series participants Goodlettsville, Tennessee (August 3rd and 16th) and Petaluma, California (August 22nd), have started school already.   And those are just the kids from the US.

So, instead braving the hot, crowded aisles of their neighborhood schools and Office Depots, these real boys of summer are toiling under the watchful eyes of a sporting nation.  Trading the three Rs for ERAs, at least for a little while.

Can sports really help prevent youth violence?

A question posed by The Huffington Post in a very good article by Elias De Leon. 

From the article:

There are certain benefits of playing sports that have become almost indisputable from a scientific standpoint. For instance, countless studies have shown that the physical exercise associated with sports makes athletes generally healthier than less active people. But other claims about the benefits of sports aren’t so well established, although they are just as commonly believed. And according to sports sociologist Jay Coakley, the link between sport programs and the positive changes they are supposed to create for individuals and communities is unproven.

“That belief is much more mythical than factual,” said Coakley, who is a professor emeritus at University of Colorado in Colorado Springs. “There is no empirical support for that particular belief.”

and

[Coakley] says the best studies are longitudinal, following athletes and non-athletic peers through their adolescent years and then comparing incidents of violence.

Some of the most recent research to do that is from Xin Jiang, a PhD candidate at Ohio State, who studied data provided by more than 13,000 teens from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. Her study, published this year in the Journal of Youth Adolescence, did not find "across-the-board advantages"--in other words, lower odds of being involved in violence--for young people who participated in sports-centered extracurriculars. Jiang wrote that the “findings challenge the viewpoint that participation in mainstream extracurricular activities… is equally beneficial for all youth.”

Meanwhile, there are certain sports that studies have found to be associated with increasing violent behavior. In a 2007 study of NLSAH data, Penn State criminologist Derek Kraeger found that football players and wrestlers are significantly more likely than teens who don’t play sports to get in serious fights. And even when they aren’t athletes themselves, boys are more likely to fight if their friends play football.

Five ring fever

It is not unusual at the conclusion of an Olympic Games to see articles on the increased number of kids wanting to participate in one sport or another.

Here are a few such articles:

Female Sport Enrollment Spikes After Olympic Wins
KLAS-TV 8 News NOW -- Aug 13, 2012

 ...The success of the female athletes has ignited the interest in competitive sports for women

Columbia gymnastics clubs prepare for 'Olympic boom'
Columbia Missourian -- Aug 5, 2012

"We see a huge spike in membership with the Olympic movement, and with the profit and involvement, gyms can ride the spike for almost four years until the next Olympics," said Cheryl Jarrett, vice president of member services at USA Gymnastics, the national governing body for gymnastics.

Interest in swim lessons increases during Olympics
First Coast News -- Jul 31, 2012

When Olympic swimmers go for the gold and win there's an immediate increase in the number of parents on the First Coast wanting to enroll their kids in swim lessons according to an Olympic gold medalist and former world champion swimmer.

The cost of enrolling a child in Olympic sports
WZZM -- Jul 31, 2012

If you're watching the Olympics and are thinking about enrolling your child in a sport, you might want to consider time and money. Some are more expensive than others ... The least expensive of the Olympic sports is track and field...