Huddle up: One team per middle school will make tryouts more aggressive

Marques Hunter

Huddle up

I’m having a difficult time swallowing the idea of more kids being turned away at the middle school level who want to play sports.

I know there are budget reductions this year for the Peninsula School District, and addressing a $5 million shortfall isn’t an easy task to manage.

All I seem to hear these days are problems attributed to the economy — locally, statewide and nationally.

Now the economy has slipped into the lives of our youths. I hoped it would never happen.

And depending on the potential 2010-11 budgetary woes, there may be a higher number of kids turned away again due to the state’s struggling economy.

There will not be separate seventh- and eighth-grade middle school sports teams this year in basketball, soccer or volleyball. Instead, the PSD middle schools will combine the grades into one team.

Thankfully, track and field and wrestling will have teams at each grade level. Otherwise, some young athletes may never have an opportunity to play for their respective schools.

That hurts, just to write it.

The school district is forecasting it will eliminate about 460 slots for basketball, soccer and volleyball this year to help reduce its budget. That’s about one-third of the total number of projected slots this year.

Fewer athletes means fewer coaches. And fewer games results in fewer referees. And fewer contracts to coaches, referees and an increase in pay-to-play by $10 per player is the way the district hopes to cut the middle school budget in half, from $250,000 to $125,000.

Parents have questioned the decision to increase player cuts to sports. They have advocated to substantially increase pay to play in order to give more kids an opportunity to participate in extra-curricular activities.

For many years, Goodman, Harbor Ridge, Kopachuck and Key Peninsula middle schools have had separate seventh- and eighth-grade teams. It’s been a more relaxed transition when a middle-schooler leaves one grade to compete in the next.

Now, emphasis will be placed more on performance, regardless of age or grade.

Some will look forward to the increase in competition. Others will stray away because they’re simply not ready, or they might feel intimated by facing kids who are considerably better.

There have always been cuts in middle school athletics, just not to this severity. It certainly never feels good to be cut from a team.

Extra-curricular activities play a huge role in the lives of middle school students. It’s a time when some are trying out for an organized team for the first time.

Not only that, but the coaches will be faced with a difficult task of picking their teams. Do they pick strictly on performance? Or do they try and give an edge to an eighth-grader because it’s their final year before they go to high school?

If a seventh-grader is more talented, he or she deserves the right to play up. If a sophomore outplays a senior, the underclassman should get the opportunity because they earned it.

These middle school kids had been faced with making the team of their respective grade. That in of itself meant vying for a spot on the team.

Sports are all about competition. But where do we draw the line and simply let more kids experiment with the hope of developing their skills?

Turning kids away because there isn’t enough money doesn’t sit well with me. They shouldn’t be punished for something they don’t have any control over.

The district has a solution of partnering with the YMCA and Boys & Girls Club to enhance the opportunities for sixth-graders who can only wrestle or compete in track and field without being cut.

I like the idea, but it still doesn’t solve having just one team per sport. Parents will have to be a little more resourceful when it comes to finding a team for their child to play for.

Let’s hope next year the PSD can find enough money or alternative ways of keeping middle school sports divided more by grade level and not so much by performance.

Reach sports reporter Marques Hunter at 253-853-9246 or by e-mail at marques.hunter@gateline.com.