Competitive Sports: Should Every Child Play?By Susan ZanglerSource: NY Metro Parents (nymetroparents.com)

It happens at one time or another to all parents of kids who play sports. The score is close, the atmosphere is heated, and your child is sitting on the bench. Maybe he or she has gotten five minutes or so at the beginning, but since then it's been strictly a no-play situation. First you're puzzled, then even angry, but there is always the feeling of hurt for your child. What do you do?

Sports is a significant part of American life and participation starts at an early age. Tee-ball and soccer begin in kindergarten; Little League, softball, youth football, basketball and other sports kick in around third grade, and competition is already part of the mix. Competition means winning and winning means playing your best players.

The other part of this equation is that we know that sports are good for kids. Being active and part of a team are important facets of growing up: being active helps develop good lifelong exercise and health habits, and being part of a team teaches lessons of cooperation and collaboration.

When children are younger, recreation departments and organizations such as the American Youth Soccer Association (AYSO) have "everybody plays" policies. But what happens when they reach high school? What do you do if your child is not the best player on the team, or not particularly good at athletics in general?

Angela Tammaro, athletic director at the Greenwich Academy in Greenwich, CT, says their program includes everyone who wants to play up to but not including the varsity level, where the philosophy changes.

"At the lower level, we will sometimes have three teams in one sport so all students get a chance to play. We plan a schedule with a lot of games and split the playing time among the teams. For those students who are not really athletic or 'team-minded', we encourage them to do other athletic activities, such as yoga, self-defense or dance, all of which we offer as part of our physical education program. We believe that physical activity is an important part of life."

At the varsity level, she continues, it's different. "Although we have a no-cut policy, students who are not as good understand they will be sitting on the bench. We are a competitive school, and winning is a part of a coach's job."

How does she handle parents who are not happy with their child sitting out the game?

"It's interesting," she replies. "The students seem to be able to assess their own ability far better than their parents. I just explain to parents that at the varsity level, winning is important to the school, the coach and the team."

Tim Sullivan, a guidance counselor at Yorktown High School and an assistant varsity football and hockey coach for Horace Greeley High School in Chappaqua, views the problem from both sides.

As a guidance counselor, he sees the kids who don't make the team. "I sympathize," he says, "but also try to tell them that this is a part of life. We don't always get the job we interviewed for or the promotion we're entitled to; we don't always get into the college we wanted. High school sports is a place we start learning those lessons. It's not easy."

As a coach, he echoes Tammaro when he says, "Coaches pick players to form a team that will win games. That means players with good skills, athletic ability and a certain aggressiveness and 'team-first' attitude. That also means freshmen or sophomores may play over upperclassmen. For coaches at the varsity level, part of their job is about winning."

Sullivan has other advice as well: "If you don't make the team, go to the coach, see if he needs some help; perhaps be a manager. There isn't a coach at the varsity level who doesn't need help and would be very willing to let a child be part of the team in some way. It might be the hardest thing for a kid to do, to go back as a non-player, but I guarantee he or she will earn tremendous respect and learn a lot about themselves."

If these are hard lessons for children to learn, it is sometimes even harder for parents. One Westchester varsity coach who asked not to be identified says he was always amazed at how many parents demanded that the coach put their child on the team. Their attitude, he explains, is that competition is not as important as playing, and that school sports should not be competitive.

But, he adds, "These are the same parents who believe that getting their child into a 'competitive college' is the only true goal."

There are places where less athletic children can play sports. Maria Fox, senior physical director of the YMCA of Central & Northern Westchester in White Plains, agrees that sports are important, but, she says, "Our philosophy is that every child plays. Our program is geared to the children who didn't make the town or recreation league teams, or who did make them but get locked out of significant playing time, or who are timid about playing because they feel they will 'mess up' and be made fun of.

"Our coaches' goals are to make every player feel good about themselves," she says. "At the end of our seasons, we have award ceremonies and everyone gets an award. Our teams build self-esteem because our players feel they've accomplished something."

But if your child is one who didn't make the team, remember that sitting on the bench is a life-lesson, hard but true. Our job as parents is to help our children get through it, learn from it, and move on.

A New Competitive Sport: Grooming the Child AthleteBy Jennifer AlseverSource: New York Times

THE parents of Beau Fraser have spent $30,000 to help him become a better athlete.

From the time Beau was 10, his parents, Gayle and Brian Fraser of Aptos, Calif., have paid for professional coaches, private trainers, athletic testing, baseball camps, tournaments and travel with elite teams — not to mention travel costs for the entire family to watch him play.

The extra help may or may not transform Beau into a professional baseball player, but, at 16, he is a starting catcher on his high school team. "Every little bit helps," he said.

As the nation's love of sports grows, more children are focusing on one sport at an early age — sometimes as young as 4 — and practicing it year-round. To keep up, parents spend thousands of dollars for team memberships, personal training and even private sports schools in the hope of turning their children into high-caliber athletes or landing college scholarships for them.

Often, though, the investments may do nothing more than help children make the team. "We're a sign of the times," Ms. Fraser said. "If they're not on a traveling team, then chances are your son or daughter isn't going to make the high school team in many areas."

Gary Mayes, like some parents, is not entirely comfortable with all this competitiveness, but he has still opened his wallet to help ensure that his son, Kyle, 17, gets a chance to play the sports he loves.

"It's generally out of hand," said Mr. Mayes, a high school baseball coach in Huntsville, Ala. "Parents that have the money are going to afford their kids every opportunity, and often there is no limit."

Some parents pay $200 to $400 for new baseball bats, he said, and pay $60 an hour for private trainers to make their children more athletically fit. The players who do not get extra help tend to fall behind, he said.

Mr. Mayes has paid $2,000 to $4,000 a year for eight years so his son could play on a traveling ice hockey team. The costs are for equipment, tournaments and gasoline, as well as hotel accommodations and airfare for the family. Mr. Mayes has often turned the sports travel into family vacations.

"It's not just investing in your kids' opportunity," he said. "You're also spending time with your kids. You can't measure that."

Sports camps, private sports schools and other businesses are springing up to meet the demand, which has blossomed in the last five years.

Velocity Sports Performance, based in Alpharetta, Ga., operates 65 sports training facilities nationwide that work with accomplished athletes in many fields, like Jeremy Bloom, the skier, and Charlie Villanueva of the Toronto Raptors basketball team. But increasingly, the centers are also catering to children.

As many as 130,000 youngsters come to Velocity centers each year, paying $15 to $45 for a one-hour to 90-minute session, two to three times a week. They receive general coaching on strength, speed and agility. Velocity's sales are growing by 30 percent a year, and 35 more franchised centers will open this year, said David B. Walmsley, a co-founder and chief executive.

And Sparq Training, in Portland, Ore., has built a business selling computerized athletic testing equipment and other products, like cones and medicine balls, to coaches, training centers and sports camps. Many students know the company for its Sparq Rating test, which analyzes their abilities in specific sports and gives them goals.

The company is scheduled to test 245,000 students this year at clinics, camps and schools. The tests are often free, but the company expects to sell more than $10 million worth of the equipment needed to conduct the tests to training centers, coaches and sports camps, said Andy Bark, a founder of Sparq.

The spending on young athletes has also trickled down to individual trainers like Andy McCloy, who calls himself a performance enhancement specialist. He works with about 60 student athletes a week in Huntsville, charging $30 to $150 an hour for sessions to improve their strength and speed. He also holds six-week sports camps that cost students $250 to $450 each.

The latest training tactics, Mr. McCloy said, can help less athletic children compete better. "Demand is increasing more and more, and it's not something I see letting up," he said. "Parents are competitive, and they don't want their kids to be left out."

Parents of serious athletes may take another route, spending up to $40,000 a year to send them to private sports-oriented schools with professional coaches and world-class trainers.

At IMG Academies in Bradenton, Fla., more than 700 students ages 10 to 18 train throughout the traditional school year in tennis, golf, soccer, baseball and basketball. The Pendleton Academy, on the IMGA campus, handles the students' academic schooling. More than half of the students live on a 300-acre campus and may train in their sport several hours a day, depending on the program. More than 85 percent of graduates receive college scholarships, the school says. Some 12,000 additional students attend programs on a weekly basis each year.

To help his son, Alex, win a scholarship, Stephen Pettee of Newhall, Calif., enrolled him in a public high school, William S. Hart in Santa Clarita, Calif., known for producing football stars like Kyle Boller of the Baltimore Ravens. Mr. Pettee also hired National Scouting Report, a company in Alabaster, Ala., that promises to market Alex's football talents to colleges.

National Scouting Report created a highlight video of Alex's performance on the field and a personal Web site with his photos, biography and news clippings. A representative regularly contacts colleges about Alex. The cost for it all is $2,300.

Letters from colleges expressing interest "have definitely picked up since we did this," said Mr. Pettee, who has invested in baseball, basketball and football training, camps and personal coaching over the years. "He doesn't need a scholarship, but it's fun," Mr. Pettee added. "College is definitely an expensive proposition."

As tuition costs rise, more parents than ever are seeking college scholarships for their children, according to National Scouting Report, which will help 4,000 students this year in that quest.

Yet it is relatively rare for students to receive substantial athletic scholarships, said Dave Galehouse, a co-author of "The Making of a Student Athlete," a guide to selecting a college, being recruited and playing college sports. At many colleges, he said, only a few exceptional players in sports other than the big attractions of football and basketball get full scholarships. Much more common are partial scholarships of as little as $1,000.

"You have parents who are spending thousands and thousands of dollars," he said. "I think a lot of people overestimate how much money they're going to get."

The financial outlays and the focus on youth sports elicit criticism from some experts on children's athletics and child psychiatry, who worry that it may be another sign that American parents have become overzealous about sports and put too much pressure on children. The results, they say, can include overscheduling, discouragement and injuries.

"Parenting has become the most competitive sport in America," said Alvin Rosenfeld, a child psychiatrist and a co-author of "The Over-Scheduled Child: Avoiding the Hyper-Parenting Trap" (St. Martin's, 2001). "It robs children of their childhood."

STEVE SPINNER created Sports Potential, a company in Menlo Park, Calif., that aims to keep such concerns in mind — for example, by guiding parents to enroll their children only in sports for which they are ready. He started the company with the help of Bill Bradley, the basketball star turned politician.

Sports Potential sells a $135 test called Smart, which analyzes the cognitive and physical skills of children ages 8 to 12 to determine potential in 38 sports. As part of the results, children and parents each get a personal Web site, where they can learn sports terms and drills and track their progress.

The company will start testing thousands of students this summer through local parks and recreation departments, and at sports camps in Dallas, Boston and San Francisco, Mr. Spinner said. Next year, the company plans to expand to 10 more cities.

"Research proves that not every child is right for every sport at the same age," he said. "Participating in the wrong sport regardless of the athleticism can lead to frustration, burnout and loss of enthusiasm for all sports. We're about helping parents be better parents."

No Child Left out of the Dodgeball Game?By Helyn TrickeySource: CNN

(CNN) -- As more of America's school-age children are growing fatter, the physical education curriculum that might help them win the fight is gasping for air, says a recently released report.

The 2006 Shape of the Nation -- jointly conducted by the American Heart Association and the National Association for Sport and Physical Education, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting high quality physical education -- concluded that most states are failing to provide students with adequate physical education requirements.

The percentage of students who attend a daily physical education class has dropped from 42 percent in 1991 to 28 percent in 2003, the report says.

The report's findings are compelling in the context of the rise in obesity rates.

The number of kids considered overweight has more than tripled since 1980, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Among those between ages 6 to 19, over 9 million kids -- 16 percent -- are considered overweight.

There is no one single reason for the rise in obesity nor is it an overnight phenomenon, experts say. Changes in eating patterns -- like the portions of food consumed, which have grown over the last 20 years and the types of food now available, like fast food and pre-packaged meals which may be high in fats, sugars and calories -- have played a role in the weight gain, the CDC says.

Modern life has also made Americans more sedentary. "Technology has created many time and labor saving products. Some examples include cars, elevators, computers, dishwashers, and televisions. Cars are used to run short distance errands instead of people walking or riding a bicycle," the CDC says.

Meanwhile, some 41 million American kids participate in organized, extracurricular youth sports like soccer, baseball, and football, which can balance the reported drop in physical activity at school. But, proponents of increased physical activity contend that not every child is able to take part in the sometimes-expensive organized play, making physical education in schools essential.

"With the obesity rates going up and it's in our face, why are we cutting P.E. time? I don't get it," says Garrett Lydic, a physical education teacher at North Laurel Elementary School in Laurel, Delaware and his state's Teacher of the Year in 2006.

"The focus right now is on testing," he said, referring to a series of academic tests now mandated by federal law. "The result is that there's less time to get kids more active."

The curriculum at Lydic's school allows for students to spend about 90 minutes a week with him. Additionally, Lydic's students get a 20-minute recess each day.

Federal law to blame?

Critics contend that the very legislation meant to bolster national academic standards -- the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 -- may be a culprit in the diminishing P.E. curriculum, unintentionally sapping schools of time and resources for exercise as educators focus more and more on test scores and rigorous academic coursework.

The NCLB Act is President Bush's centerpiece education law that, among other things, requires virtually all students to test at their grade level for math and reading. Schools that do not measure up to the standards two years in a row have to provide more tutoring or let students transfer to better schools.

"We acknowledge that while the goals of these educational initiatives -- NCLB included -- are good, our position is that this is not an either/or situation. We should expect both from our schools: physical activity and high academic achievement," says Russell Pate, a professor of exercise science at the University of South Carolina. He is also a co-author of an American Heart Association scientific statement entitled "Promoting Physical Activity in Children and Youth."

"We really feel that a national problem is that P.E. and health education are not included in core curriculum in schools," he says. "I think it is obvious schools are going to understandably pay the most attention to areas where they are evaluated. If we continue to leave P.E. off the accountability records, it will be hard to get schools to incorporate it."

Nearly a third of the states do not mandate physical education for elementary and middle school students, and 12 states allow students to earn required physical education credits through online physical education courses, according to the NASPE report.

While most states require some sort of physical education, a majority of them do not have specific curriculum requirements, leaving crucial decisions like the amount of time spent in P.E. classes, student assessment or class size up to local school districts, individual schools or even teachers, the report said.

High school students seem to fare the worst. The study found that more than a third of young people in grades 9 to 12 do not regularly engage in vigorous physical activity: Sixty-nine percent of ninth-graders participate in vigorous physical activity on a regular basis, while only 55 percent of 12th-graders take part in the same level of activity.

A national study by the Center on Public Education published earlier this year on the implementation of the No Child Left Behind law found that 71 percent of the districts surveyed had elementary schools that cut back on instructional time for a subject to make room for more reading and math -- the primary focus of the law.

Of the four subjects that the districts most frequently cited as having been cut, physical education was the least -- behind social studies, science, and the arts, CPE president Jack Jennings said. "What our data is showing is that there is a cut [in time devoted to physical education], it just isn't as large as academic subjects," he said.

The U.S. Department of Education contends in a newly released study that 99 percent of public elementary schools have some type of physical education built into their curriculum in 2005.

But how often students actually engaged in physical activity varies widely. Between 17 and 22 percent of students attended P.E. each school day. Another 11 to 14 percent scheduled P.E. three or four days a week and 22 percent scheduled P.E. one day a week.

Chad Colby, deputy press secretary for the Department of Education, defended the NCLB's requirements.

"I think you have to look at many other factors when you look at obesity," he said. "To put the blame on a program that requires kids to read and do math at grade level is absurd. It tends to be an excuse, but it is a poor one."

Physical education privatized?

Ironically, it may be just that half-hour of recess or ten minutes of running laps that helps boost test scores more than anything else, says Eric Jensen, author of "Enriching the Brain," a book that explores the relationship between physical movement and cognitive learning.

"Exercise creates more alertness in a classroom situation," Jensen said. "It stimulates more of the natural uppers in brain, like dopamine, and it improves working memory and problem solving skills."

Jacalyn Lund, president of National Association for Sport and Physical Education, also contends that not every child has the time or money to play soccer or basketball or take ballet lessons after school.

"Schools are the one thing that kids do each and every day, so if P.E. can become a core subject in the school ... every child can get a strong background, and we know they'll be more likely to participate in physical activity as adults," she said.

Jensen says the trend toward after-school organized sports and away from mandated physical education in public schools has made the playing field uneven.

"The upper echelon in our society will have more access to sports, and the lower income kids will get less and less physical activity. ... (This trend) keeps poverty-stricken kids where they are ... it's not getting better; it's getting worse in our nation," he said.

Pate, the exercise science professor, says the trend has placed more of a burden on families for finding outlets for physical activity.

"I think one interpretation is that we've privatized P.E. -- not intentionally -- but by cutting back on physical education in the schools," he said.

"We've put parents in the position of finding these services elsewhere, and families with resources can get their kids into classes and sports leagues, but transportation issues and safety issues can be greater barriers for less advantaged families."

At North Laurel Elementary School, P.E. teacher Lydic makes the most of the time he has with his elementary students.

One popular activity he uses involves placing large, magnetized math problems all over the rock face of a climbing wall.

When his students arrive to class, he will ask each one to choose an answer out of a box and then climb the wall, solving addition and subtraction problems as they pull themselves along until they find the math problem that matches their answer.

"When you learn something through physical means your brain has a better way of recalling it," Lydic explained. "The kids are already excited about moving, you don't have to get them excited, you just have to get the teachers out of their comfort zones and convince them to take more risks in terms of activities and new ways of learning."

How Physical Fitness May Promote School SuccessBy Gretchen ReynoldsSeptember 18, 2013 12:01 amSource: New York Times Wellness Blog

Children who are physically fit absorb and retain new information more effectively than children who are out of shape, a new study finds, raising timely questions about the wisdom of slashing physical education programs at schools.

Parents and exercise scientists (who, not infrequently, are the same people) have known for a long time that physical activity helps young people to settle and pay attention in school or at home, with salutary effects on academic performance. A representative study, presented in May at the American College of Sports Medicine, found that fourth- and fifth-grade students who ran around and otherwise exercised vigorously for at least 10 minutes before a math test scored higher than children who had sat quietly before the exam.

More generally, in a large-scale study of almost 12,000 Nebraska schoolchildren published in August in The Journal of Pediatrics, researchers compiled each child’s physical fitness, as measured by a timed run, body mass index and academic achievement in English and math, based on the state’s standardized test scores. Better fitness proved to be linked to significantly higher achievement scores, while, interestingly, body size had almost no role. Students who were overweight but relatively fit had higher test scores than lighter, less-fit children.

To date, however, no study specifically had examined whether and in what ways physical fitness might affect how children learn. So researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign recently stepped into that breach, recruiting a group of local 9- and 10-year-old boys and girls, testing their aerobic fitness on a treadmill, and then asking 24 of the most fit and 24 of the least fit to come into the exercise physiology lab and work on some difficult memorization tasks.

Learning is, of course, a complex process, involving not only the taking in and storing of new information in the form of memories, a process known as encoding, but also recalling that information later. Information that cannot be recalled has not really been learned.

Earlier studies of children’s learning styles have shown that most learn more readily if they are tested on material while they are in the process of learning it. In effect, if they are quizzed while memorizing, they remember more easily. Straight memorization, without intermittent reinforcement during the process, is tougher, although it is also how most children study.

In this case, the researchers opted to use both approaches to learning, by providing their young volunteers with iPads onto which several maps of imaginary lands had been loaded. The maps were demarcated into regions, each with a four-letter name. During one learning session, the children were shown these names in place for six seconds. The names then appeared on the map in their correct position six additional times while children stared at and tried to memorize them.

In a separate learning session, region names appeared on a different map in their proper location, then moved to the margins of the map. The children were asked to tap on a name and match it with the correct region, providing in-session testing as they memorized.

A day later, all of the children returned to the lab and were asked to correctly label the various maps’ regions.

The results, published last week in PLoS One, show that, over all, the children performed similarly when they were asked to recall names for the map when their memorization was reinforced by testing.

But when the recall involved the more difficult type of learning — memorizing without intermittent testing — the children who were in better aerobic condition significantly outperformed the less-fit group, remembering about 40 percent of the regions’ names accurately, compared with barely 25 percent accuracy for the out-of-shape kids.

This finding suggests that “higher levels of fitness have their greatest impact in the most challenging situations” that children face intellectually, the study’s authors write. The more difficult something is to learn, the more physical fitness may aid children in learning it.

Of course, this study did not focus specifically on the kind of active exercise typical of recess, but on longer-term, overall physical fitness in young children. But in doing so, it subtly reinforces the importance of recess and similar physical activity programs in schools, its authors believe.

If children are to develop and maintain the kind of aerobic fitness that amplifies their ability to learn, said co-author Charles Hillman, a professor of kinesiology at the University of Illinois and a fellow at the university’s Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, they should engage in “at least an hour a day” of vigorous physical activity. Schools, where children spend so many of their waking hours, provide the most logical and logistically plausible place for them to get such exercise, he said.

Or as he and his co-authors dryly note in the study: “Reducing or eliminating physical education in schools, as is often done in tight financial times, may not be the best way to ensure educational success among our young people.”

School Should Be about Learning, Not SportsBy Amanda RipleyOctober 22, 2014 10:18 amSource: New York Times Room for Debate

In the world’s smartest countries, school is about learning. Full stop. There is no confusion about the academic hurdles kids must clear to have full and interesting adult lives. Kids play sports, of course, but outside of school, through recreation centers, club teams or pick-up games on dirt fields with no adults in sight. 

When these same kids come to the U.S. to live or study abroad, they are surprised by the Olympic villages they encounter in our high schools. Here, school is about learning, but it’s also about training to compete in games that the majority of kids will never get paid to play. It’s about pep rallies, booster clubs, trophy cases and cheerleaders decorating football players’ lockers after they fill them with brownies. 

Those messages shape kids’ priorities. When I surveyed former exchange students about their impressions of America, 9 out of 10 said that teenagers here cared more about sports than their peers back home. “Doing well at sports was in the U.S. just as important as having good grades,” observed one German student. 

This mash-up makes school more fun, without a doubt. “The biggest difference was definitely the school spirit,” one student from Finland noted. “It was amazing to see how school wasn't just about the grades. In my home country, school is just for learning.”

The problem is the dishonesty. By mixing sports and academics, we tempt kids into believing that it’s O.K. if they don’t like math or writing — that there is another path to glory. Less obvious is that this path ends abruptly, whereupon they get to spend 50 years in an economy that lavishly rewards those with higher-order skills and ruthlessly punishes those without.

Kids notice when they have a sub in math class because the football coach (I mean teacher) has an away game. It is not lost on them that their local newspapers devote an entire section to high school sports and say nothing about the trials and travails of the AP English class. This hypocrisy eats away at the focus and integrity of our schools. 

Imagine if medical schools dedicated hours of every day (and a chunk of their budgets and staff) to the culinary arts — to perfecting tiered wedding cakes and artisan breads. We could argue that this approach keeps med students from dropping out, but we would sound insane. 

Competitive sports is not about exercise. If it were, we’d have the fittest kids in the world. It’s about a fantasy with a short shelf life. If we want to build school spirit and teach kids about grit, hold a pep rally for the debate team. Those kids are training to rule the real world.

Turn Down the High School Football VolumeBy Buz BissingerOctober 21, 2014 10:14 pmSource: New York Times Room for Debate

I primarily spend my time in a remote corner of southwestern Washington. There is a small town nearby called Ilwaco. Several towns feed into the high school there. They have a football team called the Fishermen, which surprised me at first. The school is small with about 400 students. They just recently ended a 17-game losing streak.

Then I met a young man on the team. He was selling merchant discount cards to help raise funds for the program. You could tell from his size that he had no aspirations of football beyond high school. You could also tell that he loved playing.

There was a lovely innocence to it all. The team does what a high school football squad should do — become the focal point of team and town and wider community.

Most high schools play football this way. But then there are the high-powered programs that mimic the major college ones. There has to be a better way.

But getting rid of high school football is a terrible idea. What is needed is a turning down of the volume — not such an easy task given how competitive sports are ingrained into our culture. It is shocking that the head coach of Sayreville War Memorial High School in New Jersey spent little time in the locker room. The community of Allen, Tex., should never have built a high school football stadium for $60 million (which subsequently needed $2 million in repairs because of cracks).

Football is now being watched with a high-powered telescope because of the spate of recent scandals at every level. Fanatical coaches cannot hide anymore. Players are no longer immune from punishment. The effects of chronic traumatic encephalopathy is not some left-wing conspiracy. As long as the heat continues there will be changes. Maybe enough to make high school football just a game. 

Make Sports an After-School Activity, Not a Competitive TeamBy Earl SmithOctober 21, 2014 10:15 pmSource: New York Times Room for Debate

No, high schools should not have competitive sports teams. And especially not in under-resourced inner city high schools where academic programs are often sacrificed to finance sport teams. And not in their current form. Like in colleges and universities, the once “extracurricular activity” of an after-school sport (especially football) has gotten out of control. 

High school teams going to preseason sport camps (often out of state); coaches that have no academic connection to the school; the building of huge, expensive stadiums; the opening of the sport season before school even starts: these are all indicators that the primary mission of high school has been supplanted and replaced — especially for those young men playing football and basketball — by sports. Even the student bodies in many high schools have developed cultures that glorify sports at the expense of the scholar, as in the Jocks vs. Puke mentality that sports columnist Robert Lipsyte has written about. 

And, for those who defend this system by invoking it as a route to a college scholarship, the social science research has shown (over and over) that the chances are slim to none, especially for young women, who are often dismayed to find that even when they are talented enough to win a scholarship, it is usually a fraction of what they need. Even in football and basketball, only 2 to 5 percent of young men playing on their high school team will earn a college scholarship. 

Let's return high school sports to the simple after-school activity it once was, like the drama club or the science club. Give young men and women an opportunity to develop holistically, in moderation, and with realistic expectations for their college and professional lives.

Sport and Education Work Well TogetherBy Jay P. Greene and Daniel H. BowenOctober 21, 2014 10:15 pmSource: New York Times Room for Debate

Athletics have always been an essential component of a liberal education, but recently sports in school have come under attack. If, because of that, athletics are cut or eliminated from schools, the quality of education would likely be harmed.

There is a relatively consistent body of research showing that students who participate in athletics tend to fare significantly better both in school and in later life. Participating in sports, like playing in the school band or competing on the debate team, are cognitively and organizationally demanding activities that help convey self-discipline and leadership skills. This is especially true for students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

In addition, our own research has found that schools that offer more sports and field more successful teams produce higher test scores and graduation rates. So, there is no reason to believe that schools that emphasize sports do so at the expense of other educational goals.

What is the case against sports in schools? People sometimes cite the bad behavior of some student athletes, such as recent incidents of sports-related hazing in New Jersey. Quite often they refer to fictionalized accounts of sports corrupting education, as in the movie "Varsity Blues." But selective anecdotes and fiction do not constitute generalizable evidence.

Others refer to the fact that certain high-achieving countries, such as South Korea and Finland, do not have athletics in schools. This may be true, but then again many low-achieving countries also lack school sports programs. There is no reason to believe that the academic success of students in South Korea or Finland has anything to do with the absence of school athletics rather than with some other feature of those countries.

It is strange that as many education advocates are seeking a “broader, bolder” approach that expands the responsibilities of schools to include social work, medical care and food provision, supporters of that vision are also often seeking to shrink school activities by eliminating sports. They are also fighting to prevent cuts in school-sponsored extracurricular activities such as band, debate and the arts. Why are sports on the chopping block when these other elements of a well-rounded education need to be preserved?

The evidence suggests students benefit from schools that offer a variety of enriching activities, including sports. Singling out sports for elimination while fighting to preserve other elements of a liberal education betrays an elitist bias that reveals more about the opponents of athletics than it says about the research on what helps students.

School Sports Provide Lessons in How to LiveBy Donte StallworthOctober 22, 2014 3:31 pmSource: New York Times Room for Debate

It was a blistering hot Saturday afternoon in Sacramento, Calif., in October 1997. I was drained and dehydrated and my team needed a huge play. At the time, I was one of the top high school football players in the nation, and I played both offense and defense. That day, I was exhausted from going against Matt Barnes, a future N.B.A. star, then a wide receiver for Del Campo high school. My coach pulled me aside. "We need you, now!" he yelled into my helmet. With nothing left in me, I made a reception over the middle and outran everyone for the go ahead touchdown.

When weighing the pros and cons of high school sports, experiences like that day in 1997 could provide a good example of how beneficial organized athletics are to children both in the moment and years down the road. Looking back, I've come to realize that the best times of my life, when I was playing high school sports, also provided beneficial life lessons.

For years my Uncle Jim begged my mother to let me play football. When I turned 11, she acquiesced. I had dreamed of becoming the next Jerry Rice. Football posters became a collage on my wall, providing me with daily inspiration.

I grew up in a rough neighborhood engulfed by gangs and drugs, but there were many who helped guide us through. Mike Alberghini, my high school coach, is responsible for much of my life's success. He knew which buttons to push to motivate his team and when to express love — something he still does today after more than two decades.

As I move beyond my N.F.L. career, I incorporate much of what Coach Al taught me as a teenage boy — teamwork, responsibility, perseverance, accountability — into other aspects of my life. Whether speaking in front of high school students, college students or N.F.L. players, I always remind them the lessons they learn in sports will carry over to any profession.

The magic of high school sports isn't about how a kid can go pro someday, or even that their team wins, but that they step out of their comfort zones and challenge themselves, a lesson they take with them wherever they go in life.

There are obvious health benefits as well. In the digital age, organized athletics is one of the best ways to combat the rise in childhood and adolescent obesity.

I recognize that there are dangers whenever kids get together, including hazing. But for many communities, including my own, sports provided one of the only outlets to avoid even greater dangers and sports taught me life lessons, at an impressionable age, that I may not have learned otherwise.

Now Women Are Seeing the Benefits of School SportsBy Nicole M. LaVoiOctober 21, 2014 10:18 amSource: New York Times Room for Debate

Unfortunately there are plenty of examples of bad behavior that challenge the belief that sports build character and develop life skills to help young people grow and thrive. Sports do not automatically provide contexts for youth development. It depends on the coaches, parents and the degree to which ethical values are explicitly taught.

But when done right, sports can positively affect lives. Boys and men have long known that sports can lead to social, psychological, moral, physical and health benefits, and lead to business success at a very high level.

Girls and women began to enjoy those benefits too, with the passage in 1972 of Title IX, the federal civil rights law that guaranteed equal opportunities in schools for both sexes.

Prior to 1972, 1 in 27 girls played sports. Now that number is around 1 in 2.5, an all-time high. 

The effect of that participation in school athletics can be seen in executive suites. About 55 percent of women in top executive jobs played sports in college – presumably after playing in high school – compared with 39 percent of other female managers, a 2013 study by Ernst & Young found.

Sports provide lessons in teamwork, leadership, performing under pressure, conflict resolution, executing a game plan and knowing one’s role. Thanks to Title IX, those lessons are available to all girls and women. Educators, administrators, coaches, mentors and parents should work together to ensure that more young women take advantage of them.

Preserve High School Sports, but Monitor Them CloselyBy Mark HymanOctober 21, 2014 10:18 amSource: New York Times Room for Debate

The troubling reports out of Sayreville, N.J., this month offer another chance to call for the dismantling of high school sports. We should resist.

High school sports have a lot to offer. They’re a rite of passage in many ways, from playing for school pride to working hard to becoming the best you can be. It’s no surprise that 7.8 million athletes suited up for their high school teams last year – a record.

Let’s preserve high school sports and monitor them closely. Let’s also seize this moment to start paying more attention to the millions of kids who enjoy tossing footballs but are not going out for the varsity. There should be an equal path in sports for them.

One of the distressing realities of today’s youth sports landscape is how it caters to the most talented, competitive players. With skills training for 3-year-olds and 70-game travel seasons for rising third graders, many of us are grooming our kids to play at the next level and the next. It’s as if the only reason for a child to play is for a letter jacket or a college scholarship. Many of us have learned that’s a recipe for disappointment. The odds are heavily any young player. Less than 4 percent of high school girls’ basketball players play even one minute for a college team.

Most 14-year-olds aren’t cut out to be stars. They lack the D.N.A., the drive or both. They’ve played organized sports most of their lives. They simply want the opportunity to keep going. Pickup games are an option, of course. But have you seen a pickup game lately?

An executive in the sporting goods industry once told me, “When our kids hit their teens and we realize they aren't going to be stars in high school, we lose interest. Not that many of us want to be coaches and league presidents anymore.” That’s shortsighted. Youth sports are about more than letter jackets.

High School Athletes Gain Lifetime BenefitsBy Kevin KniffinOctober 22, 2014 10:18 amSource: New York Times Room for Debate

Ask a group of healthy college students in their 20s if they know what they had for lunch three days ago and you’re not likely to see many hands go up. But ask them for memories of competitive sports they played when they were younger and suddenly you’ll hear stories about when they pitched for their school baseball or softball team. Sports offer formative and life-long lessons that stick with people who play.

Those lessons presumably help to account for the findings that people who played for a varsity high school team tend to earn relatively higher salaries later in life. Research to which I contributed, complementing previous studies, showed that people who played high school sports tend to get better jobs, with better pay, and that those benefits last a lifetime.

Hiring managers expect former student-athletes (compared with people who participated in other popular extracurriculars) to have more self-confidence, self-respect and leadership; actual measures of behavior in a sample of people who had graduated from high school more than five decades earlier showed those expectations proved accurate.

We also found that former student-athletes tend to donate time and money more frequently than people who weren’t part of teams.

In other words, there are clear and robust individual and societal benefits that appear to be generated through the current system of school support for participation in competitive youth athletics.

With respect to whether youth athletics should be part of educational institutions, it’s certainly true that there’s no necessary relationship between the two; but, what would happen if schools were to drop all of their interscholastic sports programs?

Any policymakers who took such action would effectively be privatizing – and, in turn, limiting – an important set of opportunities that schools presently provide in a significantly more democratic and open fashion than likely alternatives would. Beyond raising a basic barrier for anyone to gain the kinds of experiences that appear to be rewarded in the workplace, the privatization of competitive youth sports would also create the largest barriers – and cause the greatest long-term losses – for those whose families are not able to bear the costs of participation outside of the public school system.

High School Dropouts Costly to American EconomySource: CBS Reports: Where America Stands

Sarae White is an all-too-typical student in Philadelphia -- she stopped going to school last year, and was on her way to becoming one more dropout.

"The teachers didn't care, the students didn't care," White said. "Nobody cared, so why should I?" In Philadelphia, the country's sixth largest school district, about one of every three students fails

to graduate -- about the national average. CBS News correspondent Bill Whitaker reports that of the four million students who enter high school every year, one million of them will drop out before graduation. That's 7,000 every school day – one dropout every 26 seconds.

Michael Piscal, Headmaster of View Park Prep Charter School in Los Angeles said, "It's not working for teachers, it's not working for students -- it's not working for society.

The dropout problem is even worse in big cities. Almost half of all students in the country's 50 largest school districts fail to get a high school diploma. Thirty years ago the United States led the world in high school graduation. Today we rank 18th among industrial nations. Besides the intrinsic value of education itself, when Americans lack an education it hurts us all -- in the wallet.

Dropouts cost taxpayers more than $8 billion annually in public assistance programs like food stamps. High school dropouts earn about $10,000 less a year than workers with diplomas. That's $300 billion in lost earnings every year. They're more likely to be unemployed: 15 percent are out of work versus a national average of 9.4 percent. They also are more likely to be incarcerated. Almost 60 percent of federal inmates are high school dropouts.

"You have high schools in Los Angeles that send more kids to prison, than they graduate from college," Piscal said. "It's time for a radical, radical change."

Who Isn’t Graduating From High School?Source: Gretchen Gavett/ June 4, 2012

As the season of mortarboard flinging, inspirational speeches and $5 billion in congratulatory gifts is once again upon us, it’s worth pausing to consider that more than 1.3 million students drop out of high school each year — that’s about 7,000 per day. And while America’s graduation rate has been on a slow rise — it’s up to 75.5 percent (as compared to 72 percent in 2001) — there are still concerns that improvements are piecemeal.

So who is most likely not walking with their classmates this month? A black, Hispanic or American Indian teenager, whose graduation rates hover around 65 percent, according to a recent study [PDF] from the Everyone Graduates Center at the Johns Hopkins University School of Education. This is compared to 82 percent of whites and about 92 percent of Asian/Pacific Islanders.

If a student lives in one of a dozen states — including New Mexico, California and Connecticut — he or she may have it even tougher. All three states’ graduation rates dropped between 2002 and 2009 and range from about 65 and 75 percent. Wisconsin has the highest rate at almost 90 percent.

By the Numbers: Dropping Out of High SchoolSource: Jason M. Breslow/ September 21, 2012

How costly is the decision to drop out of high school? Consider a few figures about life without a diploma:

$20,241The average dropout can expect to earn an annual income of $20,241, according to the U.S.

Census Bureau (PDF). That’s a full $10,386 less than the typical high school graduate, and $36,424 less than someone with a bachelor’s degree.

12Of course, simply finding a job is also much more of a challenge for dropouts. While the

national unemployment rate stood at 8.1 percent in August, joblessness among those without a high school degree measured 12 percent. Among college graduates, it was 4.1 percent.

30.8The challenges hardly end there, particularly among young dropouts. Among those between the

ages of 18 and 24, dropouts were more than twice as likely as college graduates to live in poverty according to the Department of Education. Dropouts experienced a poverty rate of 30.8 percent, while those with at least a bachelor’s degree had a poverty rate of 13.5 percent.

63

Among dropouts between the ages of 16 and 24, incarceration rates were a whopping 63 times higher than among college graduates, according to a study (PDF) by researchers at Northeastern University. To be sure, there is no direct link between prison and the decision to leave high school early. Rather, the data is further evidence that dropouts are exposed to many of the same socioeconomic forces that are often gateways to crime.

$292,000The same study found that as a result — when compared to the typical high school graduate —

a dropout will end up costing taxpayers an average of $292,000 over a lifetime due to the price tag associated with incarceration and other factors such as how much less they pay in taxes.

Are Some Youth Sports Too IntenseBy Katherine SchultenOctober 11, 2013 5:06 amSource: New York Times Learning Blog

Do you know children or preteenagers who are on sports teams so competitive that they spend several days a week nearly every week of the year playing? Whose families have organized their whole lives around getting these students to and from games and practices?

Do you think youth sports has gotten too intense, or do you feel that this level of play is right for some children? What are the benefits and drawbacks of focusing so deeply on one sport at an early age?

In “The Crazy, Intense Schedule of Competitive Youth Soccer? Bring It On,” Lisa Catherine Harper argues that being on a highly competitive soccer team has been good for her daughter:

…our daughter is 11, her sport is soccer, and that she has been playing competitively since age 7. If I revealed anything more — her position, her team or club, what she does with her downtime, or anything specific about her play — she would kill me…

Some friends wonder: Why do we spend thousands of dollars a year on team fees? Why do we shuttle her to the field three to five days a week, 50 weeks a year? Why do we organize weekends around game schedules? And why are we allowing her younger brother to follow in her footsteps?

We live out the arguments against: early focus on one sport, diminished traditional family time, financial cost, lost weekends, less after-school time, fund-raising and volunteer duties, car pools and periodic exhaustion.

Still, the benefits outweigh the costs. There are the platitudes about “teamwork” and “lessons about winning and losing,” and then there are the real rewards of team sports, which have become visible to me only over many seasons.

The first thing to know: no young athlete succeeds unless he or she wants to. Few survive — and fewer thrive — simply because of parental will. It’s too hard. There’s no off-season. Our daughter spends 4 to 10 hours a week on the field, depending on games. Home fields are close, but away games can involve an hour of travel each way. On tournament weekends there’s nothing else.

But this requirement to lean in is central to why we let her play. It’s always good to work hard and learn a skill well. Sustained, intense, focused training teaches her that hard work pays off. Every season she is stronger, faster, more skilled — and she knows it. It’s no secret that this kind of physical confidence in what her body can do is especially valuable for a girl. As is the relationship with her father that’s a result of her sport, which he also played.

Should Colleges Fund Wellness Programs Instead of Sports? By Shannon DoyneApril 15, 2013 5:01 amSource: New York Times Learning Blog

Six sports teams at Spelman College, a historically black women’s college in Atlanta, have been disbanded. A seventh, the tennis team, will wrap up its operations by the end of the month. The money that would have been spent on collegiate sports will now fund wellness programming for the whole campus.

Do you think a college has a greater obligation to offer sports teams or wellness programs? Why?

In “At a College, Dropping Sports in Favor of Fitness,” Mike Tierney writes about the decision made by college officials at Spelman College.

Officials at the college, whose 2,100 students make it the size of some high schools, decided last year to eliminate the athletic department. The college had 80 athletes spread across seven sports, but the athletic budget was roughly $900,000 for the 2012-13 academic year — from an overall operating budget of roughly $100 million.

“I was startled,” Spelman’s president, Beverly Tatum, said. “It seemed like a lot of money for 80 students.”

The highly unusual move by Spelman comes when few institutions seem to be able to resist the lure of intercollegiate sports, even as one scandal after another has tarnished the reputations of universities throughout the country.

The decision to shut down Spelman’s athletic program followed the announced intention of several colleges to leave the Great South, meaning the conference would have too few members to remain viable. For Spelman, joining another conference would have meant incurring higher travel costs, making improvements to the college’s athletic sites and fielding teams in additional sports.

While watching a basketball game in the Jaguars’ 62-year-old gymnasium, where a shorter-than-regulation court has necessitated a waiver from the N.C.A.A., Dr. Tatum began to wonder what the players would do for exercise after their eligibility expired.

Dr. Tatum had become alarmingly aware of data showing that young black women were prone to diabetes, heart disease and other ailments linked to poor diet and exercise. Observing candles being lighted on campus at 10-year reunions in memory of alumnae who had died was chilling and revealing.

A remedy seemed obvious: disband N.C.A.A.-level sports and reallocate the money devoted to them toward establishing a wellness program that could take advantage of the college’s gym, courts and fields.

… Sara Redd was a captain of the tennis team in 2006, when it won its only conference title. Now she is its coach, the last still active at Spelman.

She called Dr. Tatum’s original announcement “kind of devastating and sad,” but now says, “I think it’s a good idea,” provided that students take advantage of the expanded opportunities for physical activities, from Zumba to kickboxing.

Germaine McAuley, Spelman’s athletic director and the chairwoman of the physical education department, echoed that notion, despite her 25 years of college coaching experience and the breakup of her staff.

“It truly makes sense,” she said.

As part of the new initiative, the physical education department will be offering additional courses; the campus gym, Read Hall, is undergoing a renovation to improve its fitness facilities; and fitness and intramural programs on campus will emphasize activities that students are more likely to continue after leaving college, like golf, swimming, tennis, yoga and Pilates. Spelman also plans to promote those activities on campus more heavily, though not to make student participation mandatory.

New Graduation Standards are DauntingBy Maureen MageeOctober 27, 2014 7:59 pmSource: San Diego Union-Tribune online

SAN DIEGO — More than 40 percent of San Diego Unified’s high school students are at risk of failing courses needed to graduate in 2016 under new standards designed to make sure college-prep classes are offered equitably — at every campus regardless of ZIP code, income and ethnicity.

The class of 2016 is the first one required to meet new graduation standards that have been in the works for five years and require students to complete — with a minimum D grade — the sequence of more than a dozen courses needed to apply to a California public university. A new district report reveals how much work schools have to meet the new criteria.

Although the San Diego Unified School District has made strides preparing students for the new course requirements — 50 percent of those in the class of 2014 met them compared to 59 percent projected in the class of 2016 — it has a long way to go if it doesn’t want to jeopardize its much-celebrated graduation rate. Last year, 88 percent of San Diego Unified students graduated, giving it the second-best graduation rate among California’s big urban districts.

How individual high schools stack up

“It is troubling to see the data,” said Cheryl Hibbeln, who was promoted from Kearny High School principal to the district’s chief high school administrator in July. “We have a year and a half to make sure this class has what it needs. I think we can do it. We need to get away from triage and move to a system that serves kids.”

The school board will take up the matter today, when it is scheduled to review the report that offers new data and a menu of options to be offered to students after school, in class and during summer vacation to help put a diploma within their reach.

“It’s going to take some real targeted, special attention and interventions,” said Ron Rode, the district’s director of research and development.

Forty-one percent of the students, or 2,841, in the class of 2016 are at risk of failing to pass the college-prep classes (widely known as A-G courses) needed to graduate, according to the report. Most are the very students the new graduation rules are intended to help: poor and minority students who historically have attended schools with limited access to rigorous courses that could steer them to college.

Overall, 59 percent of students (4,169) in the class of 2016 are positioned to pass the required classes with a minimum D grade. Girls (66 percent) are better poised to pass the classes than boys (54 percent). Some 80 percent of white students are on track to pass the classes, compared to 71 percent of Asians, 45 percent of blacks and 44 percent of Hispanics. Nine percent of English learners and 25 percent of special education students are on track to complete the classes, the report shows.

When it comes to individual schools, Scripps Ranch High School is most prepared, with 86 percent of students positioned to have passed the A-G classes needed to graduate. At the other end of the spectrum, 14 percent of students attending San Diego High Schools’ Media Visual and Performing Arts academy are on track to meet the course work, the report shows.

“It’s really unfortunate that all of this falls on the high schools, at least in public opinion,” Hibbeln said. “It’s really the whole system.”

The biggest changes in graduation standards under the new rules require students to take two years of the same foreign language, a third year of college-prep math and one year of a visual and performing art class.

In the past few years, San Diego Unified has weeded out scores of “filler courses” that don’t count toward college. The district has also hired more graduation coaches and stepped up programs for English learners.

But it’s time to look at middle and elementary schools to better prepare students for graduation, Hibbeln said. For example, not all middle schools offer foreign language classes, making students less likely to take them in high school. Other middle schools offer a foreign language that is not offered to students once they get to high school.

As daunting as the data looks, students are completing the sequence of college-prep courses at the highest rates ever, said Andrea Guerrero, executive director of Alliance San Diego, a nonprofit that advocates for equity in education.

“If you are new to the party, this looks bad. But it’s been horrible for years and it’s important to note that it’s getting better,” said Guerrero, who advocated for the tougher graduation standards for years.

Part of the reason the district isn’t panicking is because it’s not unusual for a significant number of students to turn around failing grades in their final two years of high school by taking online courses. In the 2013-14 school year, students earned 1,642 course credits by taking online classes to replace bad grades, Hibbeln said.

San Diego Unified is among several large urban districts to adopt new graduation policies requiring students to pass college-prep courses. Many have faced pressure for years to improve access to rigorous courses from groups, such as the Alliance, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Urban League.

The Alliance has urged San Diego Unified to resist offering exemptions to the standards to certain student populations, as some districts have to avoid a drop in graduation rates.

“Parents don’t want categorical exemptions for their children,” Guerrero said. “They want their kids to meet high standards. If a student can’t meet a standard, find out why and help mitigate the issue.”

The A-G classes include four years of English, three years of college-prep math, three years of history and government, two years of the same foreign language, one year of visual and performing art and three years of science. An overall GPA that is a minimum 2.0 is required. Even though CSU and UC requirements call for minimum C grades in those courses, the district decided to require a D grade to ease the transition to the higher standards.

Playing High School Varsity Sports May Help Make Players Winners in BusinessBy S.G. BergAug 11, 2014 2:16 PM EDTSource: Main Street online

NEW YORK — The lessons learned playing varsity sports in high school appear to carry over into the workplace, even some 60 years down the road.

Cornell University researchers found that former high school varsity athletes seemed to have higher-status jobs, volunteered more in the community and donated to charity more frequently than non-athletes. The results formed the basis for "Sports at Work: Anticipated and Persistent Correlates of Participation in High School Athletics," by Kevin M. Kniffin, Brian Wansink and Mitsuru Shimizu and published in June in the Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies.

A previous small study by the researchers showed that people expect former student athletes to be better leaders compared with people who were active in school activities outside of sports.

"Previous research has shown that people who played a high school sport tend to have higher salaries at mid-career points," Kevin M. Kniffin, the study's lead investigator, a postdoctoral research associate in the Lab for Experimental Economics and Decision Research at Cornell University. "The new article sheds light on the reasons why that relationship exists," he says.

In addition to being team players and leaders and being competitive, former high school athletes interviewed for Mainstreet say they carry over other traits into business that they learned through playing high-level sports.

As the captain of his high school varsity team, Trey Ditto "had to learn what motivates different players to play their best," he says. Trey who later played D1 soccer at West Point, says, "Being an athlete allowed me to look at a game, understand what was working and what wasn't, make necessary adjustments and give our team the best opportunity to win." He now runs his own PR agency, Ditto Public Affairs.

"The interaction with different personalities on and off the court created a capacity for leading people from all backgrounds," says K. L. Herald, who owns a leadership development training firm. "The skills gained from working as a team to achieve the overall goal are the keys skills I use as a professional today."

Jason R. Tate, a financial planner at Jason Tate Financial Consulting who went to college on a baseball scholarship, learned how to get out of a sales or prospecting slump another from playing ball: becoming more aggressive. "Aggressiveness will get the athlete/businessperson into a mode of pro-action that will enable them to breakthrough to a new level," he says. In baseball, in a hitting slump, he'd swing at more pitches. It's an attitude of being proactive, he says.

As varsity captain of her field hockey team for two years, Carrie Brummern says that she learned "how to navigate group dynamics/politics, the importance of a shared mission, as well as how to give 110% to [her] work." Currently, she teaches people how to develop their own creativity at her website, ArtistThink.

Thomas Robert Clarke, a Philadelphia area photographer, played varsity football and baseball for four years in the hotly competitive Texas market and was captain of his varsity soccer team, as well. "I learned numerous life lessons from athletics," he says, including "the value of leadership, but also that being a leader didn't mean I had to do everything myself, and I learned how to be honest with what I can and can't do well. From that came delegation skills and the ease of being able to lead, follow, or get out of the way."