Glitz and Glamor of HS Sports

[Jeremiah Johnson]

Moline's football program has been around since 1902. Same with Rock Island's. They are, if I remember right, the longest running rivalry in the United States in HS sports. But I could be wrong. Neither of these schools do anything like what I have mentioned. Over 5,000 people come to watch the Moline-Rocky game each year.

I have come to terms and realized that the times are changing and for the most part I love change. But not this drastic and this quickly. I just think that this puts even more added pressure onto the student athletes to follow in the footsteps of previous teams. The expectations are highered even though this is a mostly new team.

And don't get me wrong, I'm definitely not limiting this to football. I have seen a recent trend in most high school sports. Especially the recruiting scandals of the parochial schools here in the area.

I forgot to mention one thing about those posters. They started selling them about 20 minutes before the game and were sold out before the game started. I don't know how many they had for sale, but they were selling them at $5 a pop and they must have made a boatload of money off of them. Great, now I just hope that that money goes towards safety equiptment and not field painting and other junk like that just to attract more people. It is a business, but at some point the boosters need to realize that it isn't good for the kids to do this kind of stuff. If only the smaller sports and extracurricular programs got the attention that the football team has gotten. I mean, heck, the soccer program was cancelled last year and this year they had to merge with neighboring Orion HS for soccer.