The Recruiting Wire 4.30
April 30th, 2008 - byHigh school athletes used to focus on one thing; making their varsity team. However, in toady’s uber-competitive sports environment playing on your high school aint like it used to be. In many instances playing on a high school team can actually hinder an athlete’s development and likelihood of receiving an athletic scholarship. Doug Chickering, the executive director of the Wisconsin Athletic Association recently acknowledged to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that his organization is scrambling to keep up with the changing times.
Chickering has identified the enemy, and he says it is the burgeoning number of elite teams and programs - some local, but a growing number of them national - that want to “siphon off” the very best high school athletes, removing them from high school athletics (and oftentimes from high school altogether), instead immersing them in a specialized, single-sport, year-round environment.
During his speech, Chickering ran down a list of organizations, from the U.S. Soccer Academy to USA Football to a joint venture between the NCAA and the NBA currently in the planning stages, that are running or planning specialized programs for cream-of-the-crop prep athletes.
Before long, parents might become so intent on having their children qualify for an elite program that they pass on the high school sports experience entirely, focusing on their own year-round club training. That’s fine for a few, Chickering said, but its effect on high school athletics - and their true purpose, to serve as an educational tool for students - could be devastating.
“If people want to siphon off the elite . . . we’re going to have to find some ways to counter that,” Chickering said. “If we don’t, eventually we won’t have to worry about public schools vs. private schools and drug testing and fair competition and facilities and charter schools and any of that. We won’t have anything to worry about, because we’ll be out of business.
Are high school programs really under attack? Does it really matter if an athlete is playing for a club team instead of their high school? It’s my opinion that elite programs will continue to draw more and more students, but also force high schools to improve the quality of facilities and coaching. Perhaps this will enable the athletes not competing in outside organizations to develop more rapidly.
The effects of this movement are sure to be felt across the nation, but what will they be? We want to here from you, comment away!
