SportsLetter

Block that buffet! Block that buffet!

Some high school football players in Mukwonago, Wis., are boycotting the school's lunchtime cafeteria food in protest of what they see as a "one size fits all" approach to feeding kids.

The players were part of approximately 70% of the 830 Mukwonago High students who normally buy lunch but who chose to boycott to protest the newly adopted, federally mandated school lunch calorie limits.

According to a Journal Sentinel Online article "schools across the country are reporting students who are unhappy with the lunch offerings."

From the article:

The healthier food is less the issue than the portions.

"A freshman girl who weighs 100 pounds can eat this lunch and feel completely full, maybe even a little bloated," said Joey Bougneit, a Mukwonago senior.

But [high school senior Nick] Blohm is a 6-foot-3-inch, 210-pound linebacker. He's also class president, and takes several Advanced Placement classes. If schools want students to perform well, he said, they can't be sitting in their chairs hungry.

Is your middle school drug testing your child?

An article in Saturday's New York Times discusses the pros and cons of drug testing middle school students who want to participate in school clubs or sports.

Florida, Alabama, Missouri, West Virginia, Arkansas, Ohio, New Jersey and Texas have middle schools that conduct drug testing and according to the Times:

Such drug testing at the middle school level is confounding students and stirring objections from parents and proponents of civil liberties.

Proponents --- including drug testing companies -- say the testing serves as a deterrent for middle school students who, for the first time, may be facing decisions about using any number of drugs, including steroids.

Critics claim the tests are unncecessary and are an infringement on students' rights.

Says Dr. Linn Goldberg, head of the Division of Health Promotion and Sports Medicine at the Oregon Health and Science University:

“Drug testing is a multibillion-dollar industry ... They go to these schools and say it’s great. But do the schools actually look at the data? Schools don’t know what to do.”

and

“There’s little evidence these programs work,” Dr. Goldberg said. “Drug testing has never been shown to have a deterrent effect.”

In 2007, Dr. Goldberg published the results of a study of athletes at five high schools with drug testing and six schools that had deferred implementing a testing policy. He found that athletes from the two groups did not differ in their recent use of drugs or alcohol.

“I think you have to look at the reason for testing,” Dr. Goldberg said. “With Olympic testing, it’s to weed out the people who are cheating. If you’re using drug testing to weed out a problem in kids, you need to get them in therapy. But it doesn’t reduce whether or not kids use drugs.”

Preventing sexual abuse in youth sports

MomsTeam.com has some excellent information on preventing sexual abuse in youth sports.

From the page: Background Checks A Good First Step:

Coach And Player: Never Alone

There a variety of steps a parent can take to protect their child from sexual predators. By far the most important step is to make sure your child is never alone with the coach by instituting a two-adult rule. Such a rule is good because it:

•Protects the child: A child is vulnerable to sexual abuse by a coach because he or she inherently trusts the coach and may be unable and unwilling to accept an abuse of that trust. If the coach is never alone with a child, the child is protected from being a victim of sexual molestation; and

•Protects the coach: Prohibiting a coach and player from being alone also protects the coach from accusation or innuendo that something could have gone wrong. A coach's career can be destroyed if the accusation of inappropriate behavior is made because the coach has no way of defending himself if he was alone with a child. This is a simple but powerful protection for all people involved. If an opportunity for inappropriate behavior never exists then inappropriate behavior cannot be alleged. Neither is inappropriate behavior likely.

Teaching safe versus unsafe touching

Parents should also be proactive in establishing a safe environment for their kids as well making sure adults act appropriately. Children should be taught how to determine what is safe touch and what is bad touch. In youth sports, touching does occur. But it is imperative that the child feels comfortable with the type of touch that is appropriate in sports and can determine if a coach or player has stepped over that line into inappropriate touching.

Are fewer California HS students suiting up to play football?

ESPN's Tim Keown has noticed a trend in high school football in California this year:  not as many players are suiting up.

From ESPN:

You want to see the impact of our increased awareness of football's dangers? Look down, not up. Most of the high-minded discussions of safety in football center on the college and professional levels, where athletes are bigger and faster and the consequences of throwing your skull around for years are far more lasting and serious. But the biggest change in perception is taking place at the high school level. This is primarily anecdotal evidence, but, through three weeks of the season in California, there are some definite trends taking shape.

There are more schools struggling to round up more than 20 players. There are more and more comically lopsided scores -- 50-0, 60-0 -- making the dreaded second-half running clock a more frequent occurrence. The difference in participation, skill level and coaching ability between the schools with rich football traditions and those without them is growing exponentially.

and

Remember, there are two main factors at work when it comes to fielding a representative high school football team: a kid's willingness to put himself through the rigors of the sport and his parents' willingness to let him. Given the growing awareness of the sport's darker side, most prominently the long-term damage associated with concussions, some erosion in participation is to be expected.

USTA's body issue

USTA coaches declined to pay travel expenses to the US Open for the Chicago-born world's No. 1 junior girls player because earlier in the summer they had told her she needed to "slim down," according to last week's Wall Street Journal.

Sixteen-year-old Taylor Townsend is the world's No. 1 junior girls player, the reigning junior Australian Open singles champion and the junior Wimbledon doubles champion who has benefited from her association with a USTA-funded development program based in Boca Raton, Fla., where Townsend is "one of 25 select juniors."  Indeed, both Taylor and her mother Sheila, who lives with Taylor in Florida, give full credit to USTA for Taylor's progress as a player.

From the Wall Street Journal:

But unbeknownst to everyone outside her inner circle, the USTA wasn't happy to see Townsend in New York. Her coaches declined to pay her travel expenses to attend the Open and told her this summer that they wouldn't finance any tournament appearances until she makes sufficient progress in one area: slimming down and getting into better shape.

"Our concern is her long-term health, number one, and her long-term development as a player," said Patrick McEnroe, the general manager of the USTA's player development program. "We have one goal in mind: For her to be playing in [Arthur Ashe Stadium] in the main draw and competing for major titles when it's time. That's how we make every decision, based on that."

US Open Champion Serena Williams, herself no stranger to conversations about weight, wasn't buying it.

From Foxsports.com:

“For a female in particular, in the U.S. in particular, to have — and African-American — to have to deal with that is unnecessary,” Williams told reporters at JP Morgan headquarters in New York, according to Daniel Kaplan of Sports Business Journal. “Women athletes come in all different sizes and shapes and colors and everything. You see that more than anywhere on the tennis tour.”

The USTA, under pressure from media reports and outraged former superstar players, including Martina Navratilova and Lindsay Davenport, eventually backtracked and decided to pay her expenses for the U.S. Open. Patrick McEnroe, head of USTA player development, said it had all been a misunderstanding.

Of course. 

Says Fox writer Greg Coucher:

And that’s where we get back into race issues. Williams and Maria Sharapova have been rivals over the years less because of any on-court matchups than because of color and body type.

Sharapova is the stereotype: white, tall, blonde, supermodel-like. Williams is bigger, more muscular. Yet while Williams has won many more titles, Sharapova has more endorsement money and seems to avoid controversies.

We’ve created a false ideal for girls. Williams has fought fitness issues throughout her career. But mostly, she is pushing a new model: strong, fit, smart, successful, athletic.

With any luck we will see a lot more of Taylor Townsend in the future.

Don’t be so fat, kids

September is National Childhood Obesity Awareness Month and there is information out there that will help kids, parents, teachers find ways to get kids up and moving.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services says:

All kids deserve to experience the positive health benefits of daily physical activity and healthy eating, and have those opportunities available to them.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has developed programs and resources to help children and parents, and they’re available in agencies including the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes of Health’s We Can!! (Ways to Enhance Children’s Activity & Nutrition) program.

On the aforementioned President’s Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition website Council co-chair and New Orleans Saints Quarterback Drew Brees tells us:

Like all parents, I want my kids to avoid the health problems caused by childhood obesity. And there are many ways to be active and to get in your fruits and vegetables every day. It's about making the healthy choice the easy choice, and ensuring that all kids have access to safe places to play, physical activity opportunities during school hours and out of school, and providing affordable, nutritious food options which the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act was created to do.

The Council also provided the following stats:

Only one in three children are [sic] physically active every day

Children now spend more than seven and a half hours a day in front of a screen (e.g., TV, videogames, computer)

Since the 1970s, the number of fast food restaurants has more than doubled

More than 23 million Americans, including 6.5 million children, live in food deserts – areas that are more than a mile away from a supermarket

Overweight adolescents have a 70% chance of becoming overweight or obese adults

For children with disabilities, obesity rates are approximately 38% higher than for children without disabilities

Free Speech vs Common Sense

A girls high school basketball coach in Matteson, Illinois, resigned as coach after the contents of his "graphic" self-published, self-help book on sex, women and empowerment resulted in him being placed on paid administrative leave from his job as a school guidance counselor pending an investigation.

Some of the "racier" details of Rich Central High School girls varsity basketball coach Bryan Craig's book, "It's Her Fault," were published online Friday by The SouthtownStar.  According to the article, the point of the book "was to give women a 'road map to having the upper hand in a relationship with a man.'"

The SouthtownStar quoted from Craig's book:

“I coach girls basketball, work in an office where I am the only male counselor, and am responsible for roughly 425 high school students a year, about half of whom are females,” Craig wrote. “Suffice it to say, I have spent a considerable amount of time around, and with, the fairer sex.”

and

“The easiest kill for a man is through the young lady with low self-esteem,” Craig wrote in the book. “Of course some will feel this is taking advantage, and yes it is. The ultimate goal for a man is to do all he can to eventually be able to commit and submit to a woman’s power.”

And from the Chicago Sun-Times:

“In some cases, strippers and dancers show the overall dominance a woman can have over a man,” Craig wrote. “Not to say that stripping is what has to be done to truly establish dominance, but these women’s mind set is in the right place in order to meet the true potential of the point of this book.”

According to SouthtownStar Rich Township High School District 227 Supt. Donna Simpson had known about the book and its contents for nearly a week but had said that Craig “has his constitutional right to free speech.”

From the Sun-Times:

“Please don’t tell me anymore,” said Rich Township High School District 227 School Board President Betty Owens when told of the book’s racy details by the SouthtownStar ...

“It’s distasteful, it’s inappropriate, and it wouldn’t be on my list of things to read,” Owens said.

The district now is "investigating" the 44-page book, available on Amazon.  We wonder if the district will buy each board member a copy.