Glitz and Glamor of HS Sports

[Jeremiah Johnson]

Originally Posted by AtalanteStar25

Okay, I have not read every single post in this thread, and as this is the first time I'm seeing it since I returned from vacation, this is really in response to the first few posts...

I think high school sports has gone too far, like many of you have said. It was mentioned earlier that there was a high school football game on ESPN. The home team there had a Jumbotron recently bought for their football stadium.

Some high schools have nicer sports facilities than some Division I-A or even I-AA colleges. It's gone too far.

It just kinda bothers me that schools would rather spend tons of money each year to improve their sports facilities than to buy new textbooks or computers or something. Hey, why not buy a new piece of shop equipment, even?

Rick Reilly, a sportswriter, had a really good article about a month ago. He wrote about how sports are getting out of hand. People are hiring personal trainers, sports psychiatrists, nutritionists, agents, etc. for children as young as 8 or 9.

This is torrid in the Quad Cities. There's a company here named "Quad Cities Sports Performance." It's really expensive and all it is is conditioning. Pretty much for the rich families to send their kids to get "better" at any sport. There's rampant usage of steroids here, too.

Also, there was a topic grazed on earlier in the thread about discipline. I don't know how bad partying and drinking is in other cities but it's horrible here. When I was playing at Moline, there was at least 4 or 5 players each week being suspended because they were caught drinking, smoking pot, getting into fights, and for all kinds of other reasons. Illinois just passed a new standard for grades, too. You have to have D's and up... or 2 F's at most... or something like that. It's not tough enough. Our robotics team has a C and above policy and that's the same as Sherrard.