COLUMN: Numbers Game

By Adam Riglian
April 25, 2010
Wareham Courier

Last week, the town of Mansfield dropped a bomb on its high school students.
No sports, no band, no extracurriculars whatsoever.
Essentially, no fun.
Three days later, after the story was widely circulated in Boston and local media, selectmen moved money from the municipal budget and user fees were enacted, saving the program.
Many saw the maneuver to cut sports as a transparent way for the school committee to get extra funds by preying on the town’s emotional attachment to its sports programs. As Mansfield News Sports Editor Mike Hardman aptly put it, “it’s an old story.”
He’s right of course. It is an old story and it’s a play that most people would be happy to see removed from the political playbook. But let’s consider, for the sake of argument, that Mansfield, or any high school for that matter, eliminated extracurricular activities.
What would the results be?
Silver Lake Athletic Director Bill Johnson brings up a great point – “where would they go at 2 o’clock in the afternoon?”
My answer – I don’t know. Johnson said sports keep about 500 to 600 kids, between his school and opposing schools, on campus each day after classes. That doesn’t include the kids that stay at school for band and other activities. I don’t have any science behind this, but to me, if you have 500 teenagers with nothing to do after 2 p.m., a few are bound to get into trouble. As the MIAA notes on its website, after-school activities are the safest option to keep kids out of trouble.
That isn’t the only fun fact the state sanctioning body has on the merits of sport as an extracurricular. Students’ grade point averages improve during the seasons in which they compete in a sport, student-athletes have higher attendance and graduation rates and, most importantly, they are cheap. As the MIAA points out, on average high school sports only account for 1 to 3 percent of the school budget.
Can you logically cut such a successful program to save 1 percent of your budget?
The numbers speak for themselves. According to data from the MIAA, the graduation rate for student athletes is 99.4 percent. The average GPA is 2.98 for student-athletes, 2.17 for non-athletes, and the average test scores in English and algebra were roughly 10 points higher for student-athletes.
Mansfield, well known as one of the most dominating track powers in the state, draws huge numbers of kids out to run every year. I don’t have any numbers to back this up, but I’m willing to bet most of those kids carry their healthy lifestyle with them when they leave high school. That’s part of what Plymouth South AD Scott Fry meant when he told me that he sees coaches as teachers outside of the classroom.
The only thing I ever took out of biology class was a heavy book and a headache, but there is plenty for students to learn on a football field, a track or on a softball diamond. Fry points to life lessons, leadership skills and team building as key to the athletic programs educational success. The MIAA backs up that assertion, stating that 95 percent of corporate officers said they participated in high school athletics.
In this argument, just like in sports, the numbers speak for themselves.