I have news for you. Sports is one of the ways kids can do school well. I think you have some nerve asking people why they are here.
@Cobrat, I’m glad I didn’t attend any of the schools you did since bullying seems to have been rampant and all the jocks ended up in jail. At my schools the athletes usually ended up in great colleges, but then they were usually a pretty smart bunch.
I’ve told this story before, so bear with me if you’ve heard it. When my husband first arrived at our college as a skinny foreigner he had to lug all his possessions the mile from the bus stop to school. As he entered campus he saw two huge football players coming across the quad. DH came from a country where American football was not played but he’d seen enough American movies, ala Revenge of the Nerds, to know what to expect, so he was trepidatious when they switched course and headed right toward him. They stopped him and asked him where he lived…then picked up his bags and carried them to his new dorm for him.
As someone pointed out, it’s part of human psychology to feel like the other group has it better. Academics feel second fiddle to the athletes, athletes feel labeled “dumb jocks”. IMO the whole thing is overblown. Be happy if you have either a star academic or a star athlete. Most kids are neither and it doesn’t always come down to hard work. Many kids will never make the honor roll no matter how hard they try, just like many kids will never make the varsity team no matter how hard they try.
Sue that’s a great story.
When I first started grad school, I had to go drop off a form a few weeks before classes started. I wasn’t sure where I was going and it was raining (I didn’t have an umbrella). A very large (as in tall and solid) man asked if he could help me find my way and offered me his umbrella. I was glad for the help and he walked me to the building I needed to go to.
He told me his name and said he was on campus for athletic training. I never thought twice about it until the first football game of the season when I heard his name. Turned out, he was one of the U of M football players.
It wouldn’t occur to me to assume that jocks were dumb or mean simply by virtue of being jocks (athletic departments as a whole is a whole other story…). But that probably comes from the fact that I was an athlete and many, many people in my family played D1 sports and are extremely intelligent to boot.
How is that you have come to be present at public school sports award ceremonies in many areas of the US? Are you involved in the actual presentations? Why would you want to be involved with something for which you have so much disdain?
No kidding. The athletes at my hs were more often good students than not. Much was made at my HS of the top ten graduates. Sal and Val got lots of attention. I’d say probably 7 or 8 out of the top ten grads were involved in sports. Some were in band and choir, too. None of them ended up in jail. I only knew of one kid from my HS who ever ended up in jail, though certainly there may have been a few I didn’t know about.
And probably also because you tend not to view everything as “them vs. us” or “my kind=good” vs. “them” = “bad.”
That’s very fair, nrdsb4. I didn’t realize that the original quotes/sentiment came from cobrat… it makes more sense now.
Haven’t read the whole thread - so sorry if someone has already mentioned this: John Urschel plays pro football and has been accepted to the PhD program in math at MIT. He already has some published papers, and his work is pretty interesting (it’s related to my subfield of math.) Us “math geeks” think this is really cool! Here’s the link:
http://www.ams.org/publications/journals/notices/201602/rnoti-p148.pdf
You are not alone. The school figured out pretty early with me that they weren’t going to be sharing my kids’ grades or standardized test scores unless they checked with me first, and I was going to say no. Some national awards they won were publicly announced by the organization, but I never allowed any media interviews. And yes, we had an awards night where there were too many awards to hold and someone went and got us a bag to put them in and I thought “what on earth were these people thinking?” It was really embarrassing and absolutely ridiculous. I couldn’t believe the school didn’t make a rule you could only get one of those plaques and then share the wealth. They even gave us a parent award plaque. I just wanted to crawl under the chairs.
adding; and they did sports and they did fine arts
and evidently I’m okay with bragging here
Basically I don’t like the idea of teaching kids to work for gold stars. They should do it for themselves. Of course, that is a really complicated subject, because there does need to be some kind of positive reinforcement for most people to keep going when the going is rough.
My own firsthand experience with jockish bullies was limited to 2 years in middle school.
The rest of that was accounts from college classmates whose experience with being violently bullied for being “Nerds” for being high academic achievers or for being passionate about or doing fine arts or classical/jazz music performance to the highest levels*
Many of their accounts made my own middle school experiences seem mild in comparison.
Especially considering I only had to spend 2 years in that environment and I knew there was light at the end of the tunnel by the second semester of 8th grade after finding I was admitted to my public magnet HS which meant leaving such types of bullies behind for good.
Those college classmates often had to live with being bullied for 4+** years in an environment where the school admins, classmates’ parents, and even local/regional neighbors/authorities took the bullies’ side. The light at the end of the tunnel only came sometime second semester senior year when they received admission to college and relief only sank in for many of them when they left their local towns/regions for college***.
- A minimum prereq to be eligible for admission to topflight conservatories like the one at my LAC.
** The bullying sometimes started well before high school.
*** Practically all of them ended up never moving back to their respective hometowns/areas where they spent K-12 years.
With the exception of Westinghouse and Math/Debate team championships, there weren’t too many public award ceremonies or ones which gave out a boatload of awards to one or a handful of individuals at my HS.
At HS graduation, the Val/Sal speeches, awards for various academic/co-curricular activities, and athletics weren’t unduly long.
One event which stood above all the rest other than the plaudits for the seniors on the math/debate teams or Westinghouse semifinalists/finalists was an announcement of all seniors who accepted appointments to the FSAs. This included speeches by senior officers(Naval Captains/Rear Admirals or Army Colonels/Brigadier Generals) sent to congratulate the FSA appointees. Interestingly enough, none of the FSA appointees in my year were HS athletes.
Is it my imagination or is this thread just the same offensive stereotyping and sour grapes post repeated over and over? I have never read so much hogwash. Some people just have a hard time being happy for other’s accomplishments. When someone has so much disdain for others, it is always an insecurity or anger within themselves.
There is nothing better than witnessing greatness in any young person — whether it is on a field, a court, a stage, the Intel Science Fair, a gallery, or a Speech and Debate competition - the list goes on and on. Any competition makes us all better. I would never begrudge a child/person for being talented or working hard, and getting recognition for it - in any pursuit.
I have been to sports awards banquets at 2 schools for 4 years… Both included the academic awards given to athlete. ‘Scholar athlete’ required a 4.0. Academic All-American is a national award and required both a high GPA and athletic statistics to get it. There were several girls on my daughter’s team with higher gpa’s, but not as good on the field, so only she and one other girl got it. Twice. Am i proud? You bet. Did she get other awards? Yep, (defensive player of the year, all county, captain) but for me the academic athletic awards were the best.
I also attended the awards for the drama group for my other daughter Drama teacher did not announce my daughter’s scholarship from the drama department of her college, didn’t help with her application, didn’t come to the senior scholarship awards night to present it while most teachers did if their students were getting a specialized award (band director, art teacher, hIstory teacher). Let’s just say she’s not my favorite teacher and I will never make 12 costumes in 3 weeks for her again. She didn’t like my daughter. My daughter’s athletic coaches, on the other hand, couldn’t have been more helpful by writing recommendations and talking to college coaches. - and neither was a teacher, just a person coaching after they worked their regular jobs.
The opportunities are there to laud the academic awards and achievements, and people just need to take those opportunities and not complain that athletes get too much attention. If you want a parade, organize a parade. You cant complain that others dont organizatize one for you.
@Sue22 and @romanigypsyeyes - I like both your stories. Thank you for sharing!
Re 122 Jonri: It is a tough call on whether the “non-winners” who try hard should be celebrated. OTOH, losing by a point or two in a big game that could have gone either way could mean the difference between the championship and going home. But if the schools did that, many would complain the recognition amounted to a participation medal - everyone is special and a winner.
Somehow, college results seem different to me. In most sports, winning or losing is a team thing and there is a clear winner and a loser. Even in track or cross country, the team that wins does not always have the kid that finishes first, it depends on all of the top finishes. With college, I don’t think the kids that got into the Ivies should be seen as winners over the kids that did not.
That being said, there should be more recognition of academic and arts related ECs. There are pages of high school sports in our weekly paper (covering 3 towns), but only a rare article on the robotics team. Some of that is due to nobody associated with the team submitting an article and the rest is that those teams may only have one competition per year, not like the weekly games, organized county championships, and state tournaments that sports have.