SportsLetter

Character building

ESPN's Rick Reilly is no fan of basketball coach Greg Wise of Houston's Yates High School.  Earlier this year Yates High, in an effort to reach 200 points in one game, beat Lee High School 170-35, leading to a game-time scuffle and hard feelings all around.  As Reilly points out in his ESPN the Magazine article:  "Wise is to sportsmanship what tsunamis are to beach chairs. So far this season, he's beaten teams by 135, 115, 99 (twice), 98, 90 and 88 points. Trying to get to 100 points in a crushing of Westbury, his players intentionally fouled to stop the clock."

While Coach Wise's motivations and sportsmanship have been called into question, high scores by teams and individuals are not an unusual occurrence in high school basketball.  Last year The Covenant School in Dallas beat Dallas Academy 100-0 in a girls high school game, a game that cost The Covenant School's coach Micah Grimes his job.  And last week MaxPreps.com's Kevin Askeland had an article pointing out that:
 
... 100 points in a game is certainly not a unique achievement in high school basketball. In fact, 20 players have broken the century mark, ranging from Danny Heater’s all-time mark of 135 points for Burnsville High in West Virginia in 1960 to the most recent effort, Tigran Grigorian’s 100-point outing in 2003 for Mesrobian (Pico Rivera, Calif.)

Take off (to the Great Green South)

Toronto's Globe and Mail had an interesting article last Friday about the increasing number of Canadian high school kids who venture south to enroll in US high school programs in order to play basketball.

According to the article:

It's estimated that as many as 100 Canadian teenagers - primarily boys from the Toronto area, though there are girls and boys from every region in the country - are chasing their hoop dreams in the United States, often as early as the ninth grade.

"It's growing, it's not going to stop if we don't do something," says Guy Pariseau, technical director for Basketball Quebec, who says nearly all of the province's 10 best players have left for the U.S. "Everyone is shopping."

At the top of the list is a lucrative scholarship to a top Division I school and dreams of a professional career.

Like  many such ventures, however, there are experiences good and bad:

... says Mike George, founder of CIA Bounce, another top Toronto-area club that has had several kids head south for high school. "For some parents, they see it like sending their kids to boarding school, it gives them a sense of security. I've had kids get full scholarships to [elite East Coast private schools] Proctor or Brewster. That's worth $45,000 a year. For them it's a no-brainer."

Not all kids are so fortunate. It's estimated about 80 per cent of them have to pay some or all of their tuition, with only the elite getting scholarships to prep schools.

Then there are rumours of kids sleeping three or more to a room, 10 to a house, with minimal adult supervision, essentially fending for themselves at schools with dubious academic standing and scant record of developing elite basketball players.

Are you fitter than a fifth grader?

Scientificblogging.com is reporting on a paper presented at the American Heart Association's 2010 Conference on Nutrition, Physical Activity and Metabolism which shows a connection between physical fitness and academic performance in fifth grade students.

The paper, titled "Long-Term Physical Fitness Is Associated with Children’s Academic Achievement," with research conducted by Dr. Lesley A. Cottrell of West Virginia University, Dr. Richard Wittberg of the Mid-Ohio Valley Health Department in Parkersburg, West Virginia, and Karen Northrup, Wood County Schools, Parkersburg, West Virginia, was part of the Poster Program at the conference.

 According to a press release from West Virginia University:

Researchers found that the children who had the best average test scores in reading, math, science and social studies were fit at the start and end of the study. The next best group academically in all four subjects was made up of children who were not fit in fifth grade but had become fit by seventh grade.

Those who lost their fitness level between grades five and seven were third in academic performance. The lowest academic performance came from those who were not fit in either fifth or seventh grades ...

“ The take-home message from this study is that we want our kids to be fit as long as possible, and it will show in their academic performance,” Cottrell said. “If we can intervene for those children who are not necessarily fit and get them to fit levels, we may also see their academic performance increase.”

Science of the Olympic Winter Games

Teachers looking for a way incorporate the Olympic Winter Games into science activities in classrooms can utilize lesson plans and videos created by the National Science Foundation and NBC Learn.  The program is called  Science of the Olympic Winter Games and is presented on Lessonopoly, a site designed to help teachers create and share lessons plans and connect with other teachers via online communities.

From the Lessonopoly website:

With the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics upon us, now is the perfect time to take a closer look at the secret behind the sports: science and math! Lessonopoly has created student activities and lesson plans to support the video series, Science of the Olympic Winter Games, created by NBC Learn and the National Science Foundation. Featuring exclusive footage from NBC Sports and contributions from Olympic athletes and NSF scientists, the series will help teach your students concepts like friction and angular momentum.  Each video is complemented with lesson plans which include fun classroom activities. The lesson plans were written by teachers at Academic Business Consultants for grades 6-9 and are aligned with California State Standards.

Coaches and Parents and Refs, oh my

Bob Cook’s blog, “Your Kid’s Not Going Pro,” which appears on “True/Slant,” is a treasure trove of examples of Adults Behaving Badly.  For the sensitive among you, we’ll tell you in advance that Cook isn’t always PG-rated.

His posts have documented incidents such as the volleyball coach in New Jersey who threw a volleyball at the ball at the head of one of his own players, (listen especially to the parent at the end of the video who says “he gets kicked out every time”); a youth basketball commissioner who suffered a concussion, had his jaw dislocated and has dental damage after being attacked by a dad immediately after a tournament game; and a wrestling referee who grabbed the throat of a high school wrestler while “advising” the wrestler not to “misbehave on my mat.”  Finally, a recent column chronicled a number of fights that have occurred at high school basketball games across the country.

Sadly, as these articles and accompanying videos demonstrate, inappropriate behavior can come from just about any adult acting in just about any capacity of youth sports.  And Bob Cook will continue to document them for us.  Job security.  Depressing, but job security.

The continuing benefits of Title IX

Two recent studies highlight the positive impact Title IX has had on the lives of girls and women, reports the New York Times.  Interestingly, both studies are by economists. 

Betsey Stevenson, an economist at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, studied state-by-state data in an effort to determine a cause and effect relationship between high school sports participation and achievement later in life.  From the Times article:

Using a complex analysis, Dr. Stevenson showed that increasing girls’ sports participation had a direct effect on women’s education and employment. She found that the changes set in motion by Title IX explained about 20 percent of the increase in women’s education and about 40 percent of the rise in employment for 25-to-34-year-old women.

“It’s not just that the people who are going to do well in life play sports, but that sports help people do better in life,” she said, adding, “While I only show this for girls, it’s reasonable to believe it’s true for boys as well.”

Robert Kaestner, an economics professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, found that increased participation in physical activity encouraged by the passage of Title IX resulted in a 7 percent lower risk of obesity for women once they were in their late 30s and early 40s.

Et tu, DePaul?

A little over a week after SportsLetter told you about a verbal commitment given to USC by putative football wunderkind David Sills comes the news that DePaul's interim men's basketball coach Tracy Webster has offered a scholarship to an 8th-grader from Rosemont, Illinois. 

Yes, Jahlil Okafor's distant cousin is NBA center Emeka Okafor; and yes, young Jahlili stands 6-7½, with a potential for him to grow to 7-3, according to his doctor; and yes, yes, yes, according to ESPN, "Jahlil has no trouble dominating inside, grabbing rebounds easily and throwing down dunks," but ... why has recruiting become so desperate that coaches are scouring the PG-13 set for potential superstars?

Like “ESPN for the high-school set”

Is how the New York Post is describing a sports network proposed by the city of New York’s Department of Education.  Says the Post:

In a bid to drum up money and interest for academic sports, the city Department of Education is putting out feelers for a company that could serve as the school system's official sports network.  The proposal would grant the rights to film, air and promote Public Schools Athletic League activities on cable or network television -- as well as online -- in exchange for marketing rights and other privileges.

Citing similar ventures in other parts of the country, sports marketing experts believe there would be a demand for such programming in New York, and money raised could be used to expand sports opportunities for students and schools.  Education officials in the city say that only 12 percent of all high school students in the city play on PSAL teams, and that 50 percent of public schools can’t offer “inter-school” sports to the their students in part due to lack of funding.

From the Really? Department

So you thought it was a joke several years ago when Hermann Wendorff of the North Carolina Fayetteville Observer wrote, tongue in cheek, about Nike signing the "unborn child of track stars Marion Jones and Tim Montgomery . . . to a 14-year apparel and shoe contract worth $188 million?"  Well, comes the news that new USC football coach Lane Kiffin has received a verbal commitment from 13-year-old quarterback David Sills of Bear, Delaware.  Sills’ personal coach, quarterback guru Steve Clarkson, gushes, "His skill set is off the chart …I've never seen anyone at his age do what he's been able to do."  Of course, this is the same Steve Clarkson who boasted: “And when I said if there was going to be a LeBron James of football it'd be Jimmy Clausen that turned out to be a pretty good prediction.”

Moving away from the hyperbole, ESPN writer Mark Saxon observed:

As recently as a few years ago, Pete Carroll wouldn't offer scholarships to juniors. When he realized that could dent his USC empire, which had been built largely by recruiting prowess, he relented. Now, apparently, Kiffin is taking things about as far as they can logically go. But he's not alone. Redell said most elite players' recruiting is practically wrapped up during their junior years.

The Redell mentioned in Saxon’s quote is longtime coach Bill Redell -- who actually coached Jimmy Clausen at Oak Christian in Westlake Village, California -- and who put a fine point on the issue by declaring: “to be honest with you, I think the whole thing's out of whack …There's so much money involved today, so many jobs at stake, that they're identifying guys in the seventh and eighth grades.”

As Saxon said, “I want to laugh, then take a shower.”

Hi Mom!

SportsLetter last week commented on the continuing professionalization of youth sports.  On Monday The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported on ESPN’s impact on high school sports television coverage.  From high schooler Lebron James in 2002 to yesterday's high school football Letter-of-Intent signing day, ESPN has been there and been live, expanding the amount of exposure high school athletes are receiving and influencing the way high school sports are broadcast both on television and the Internet.