<p>Interesting happenings in the ISL.</p>
<p>Is the League possibly not as pure as people may have thought?</p>
<p>[St</a>. George’s calls an audible - The Boston Globe](<a href=“http://www.boston.com/sports/schools/football/articles/2010/10/05/st_georges_calls_an_audible/]St”>http://www.boston.com/sports/schools/football/articles/2010/10/05/st_georges_calls_an_audible/)</p>
<p>One has to copy and paste the above to understand more of the reasoning. LA with three linemen over 300 lbs each is for starters. Kids are in it to play, not get broken in two.</p>
<p>Totally respect this:
It is not clear whether the game is being forfeited, but St. George’s athletic director and football coach John MacKay is not bothered by the possible loss.</p>
<p>“People don’t understand what schools like St. George’s are all about,’’ he said. “Our students are into much more than athletics. Athletic success is so secondary in a place like this.’’</p>
<p>Sounds like a not so subtle dig at LA.</p>
<p>Yes, fif should have posted the Glob piece too – 'tho I thought the Herald’s article was much more interesting.</p>
<p>fif knows SG well, and this is a bit surprising. Whatever, this is guaranteed to shake up the ISL.</p>
<p>Agreed Sue, that is a shot at LA (and a couple of other schools).</p>
<p>On the other hand, SG probably regrets the tone of those comments.</p>
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<p>Is it sportsmanlike to field such uneven teams? To expect a team with players who are literally half your players’ size to expose their adolescent bodies to totally predictable injury? If you need to tell your team to “play only at half speed,” you’re not in the right league. Winning by at least 40 points consistently is strong evidence that your team should play other teams.</p>
<p>There are public high schools in the immediate area surrounding Lawrence Academy. Of course, they can’t recruit athletic talent, so the public high school coaches may decline the honor.</p>
<p>I did not take the “people don’t understand…” comment as a dig at LA. I think it’s a dig at the sports writers who make a living reporting on high school sports. </p>
<p>As an aside, the role of football in academic settings should be examined someday. The evidence of permanent damage to players is increasing. At some point, parents of brain-damaged players will start suing high school coaches and schools for negligence.</p>
<p>Peri-</p>
<p>SG is clearly making a statement here about disparity in the league, and it goes beyond football. What do sportswriters, who generally ignore prep sports, have to do with it?</p>
<p>The ISL will never start scheduling public HS’s.</p>
<p>So why doesn’t LA break with the ISL and play bigger prep schools with teams that might be a better match?</p>
<p>This will pass and the fact it got any press at all surprises me. SG and LA don’t even play each other every year. I know the SG players past and present are upset and embarrassed about the turn of events. For once, common sense is prevailing. They’ll play each other in other sports this year including LAX but football is a lot different. I doubt anything is going to change in the ISL</p>
<p>fif, I was trying to express my impression that I did not take “people” in the comment to refer to LA, but rather to 1) either the person he was speaking to at the time, who would have been the reporter, or 2) people who don’t have any connection to the ISL, but will be quick to judge. “People” have been quick to judge–as I drove home last night, it was already the topic of discussion on a rabble-rousing talk show.</p>
<p>Neatoburrito, I think that playing in other leagues would be more burdensome for LA, compared to the ISL. Travel would take longer, and be more expensive.</p>
<p>This is an interesting situation in many respects. One issue that has received relatively little press is the recruiting of athletics by the ISL. Now, I think colleges have a big problem here. What kind of message does it send when Harvard or Princeton accept kids from the bottom 1/3 of ISL schools simply because they happen to be good rowers or hockey players? The former presidents of Harvard and Princeton made this point in a book they wrote. Of course, while they were presidents of their schools they apparently did nothing to stop it. That would take some guts.</p>
<p>The ISL schools are in the same boat, but a much smaller boat. Some of these schools have only 50 or so boys in class. Most varsity sports are dominated by junior and seniors for obvious reasons. Thus, some of these schools are looking at a pool of only 100 or so kids. Look at all the sports you need to “fill”: Xcountry (not too many), soccer, football (a lot of kids), hockey, etc. To be sure, some kids play multiple sports, but that still means you have to get a lot of jocks.</p>
<p>If you are the University of Michigan, who cares if you relax your admission standards for 1% of the class. The % is very different in the ISL. And don’t believe for a second that the admission standards aren’t relaxed a lot for jocks in the ISL. LA might be an extreme case, but I doubt if any ISL school is pure.</p>
<p>So what are the Head Masters in the ISL going to do? My guess is nothing. It is the easiest course for them, at least in the short run. In the long run, of course, the academics of the school will suffer.</p>
<p>Here is a thread from last year that you may be interested in reading, Jim. There was quite a discussion about the role of sports in schools. It didn’t start out that way, but it quickly morphed into a very interesting debate.</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/prep-school-admissions/814330-interesting-question.html?highlight=isl+sports[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/prep-school-admissions/814330-interesting-question.html?highlight=isl+sports</a></p>
<p>I can’t speak for all the schools in the ISL but I can state that SG is not going to accept a jock purely for the fact that he or she is phenomenal in any one or more sports. In fact, I’ll venture to say that most, if not all the schools within the ISL feel the same way. If LA happens to the right place for those players and they felt they could excel there, then so be it. Otherwise, I believe that when and if these schools take on a student who performs amazingly on the field but otherwise is miserable creates an unwanted situation. So LA has some big guys, SG forfeits, move on. The Head Masters did do something, they avoided a potential health hazard for their students, which is their number one priority. If I was standing on the side lines watching my my kid getting pounced by a 300+ opponent, I’d be upset to say the least. I say kudos to Messrs. Peterson & MacKay and the LA Head Master.</p>
<p>One of the interesting things about this discussion is that we’re working under the assumption that the schools have lowered their standards for kids such as the LA football players. While the 300+ lb. players may indeed be dumb as a box of rocks where’s our evidence? For all we know they’re incredibly bright, qualified full-pay candidates who chose LA over other ISL schools because LA’s strong football program would allow them to play at a high level and improve their college opportunities.</p>
<p>BTW, I was an ISL all-league player on a team that dominated the competition during my playing years. I was also a NMS and attended an Ivy grad school (where they couldn’t care less if you could put one foot in front of the other without tripping).</p>
<p>The difference is that when you’re crushing the competition in a sport like field hockey or baseball no one is likely to get hurt. I can understand why a smaller team might be hesitant to put their boys in front of LA’s behemoth linesmen. </p>
<p>And to those who find me naive…recruiting of jocks is nothing new. It was happening at ISL schools when I attended back in the dark ages.</p>
<p>I see I’m about to cross-post with ops, but I’ll put in my two cents anyway.</p>
<p>[Class</a> News: Paul Steiger on Yale Athletics](<a href=“Yale Class of 1964”>Yale Class of 1964)</p>
<p>I read a review of this book some time back. I think the topic of athletic recruiting’s influence on schools is very controversial, whether we’re speaking of colleges or high schools.</p>
<p>Sue, I never assumed the LA players were any less qualified academically. I like to believe that schools don’t admit kids who aren’t able to make the cut in the classroom. I think the controversy in this case was the the SG coaches deciding that their players’ safety was more important than winning a game. Kudos to them. </p>
<p>At the same time, I feel badly for the LA team. It’s no fun being really good at something if you can’t match up against someone who can make you test yourself. It’s equally frustrating to hit a ceiling on both the playing field and the debate room. Having your opponent not even engage in the contest must be very disheartening.</p>
<p>But really, the story is kind of overblown, eh? I mean, it’s just a football game…a high school football game at that.</p>
<p>I don’t think anyone has implied that these players aren’t smart but geez louise they’re BIG! As for ISL recruiting jocks, I know there are a lot of smart and athletic kids out there so the need to recruit purely for sports just doesn’t hold for me. I have a hard time believing that more than one DOA’s associated with ISL and other BS would lie strait face to me about just that issue. A few years ago Salisbury got all sorts of grief about finally having to deny acceptance to some athletes after allegedly leading them on all the way through summer school. They both wanted each other but the school had to be realistic.</p>
<p>As a high school coach I applaud the decision of the coaches and administrators involved. In contact sports, there is little to be gained, and everything to be lost, from contests involving physically mismatched teams. The persons in positions of responsibility behaved responsibly. Well done.</p>
<p>The St. Georges coaches absolutely made the right call. The 300 plus pounders should be playing in a different league, if football is the reason they are at prep school.</p>