Here’s something I don’t and never will understand about high school sports in Rhode Island; why do we have private schools playing sports against public schools? Take La Salle High School and Bishop Hendriken High School for example. Two schools that have kids from all over Rhode Island and Massachusetts playing against a bunch of kids from one small town. Now do the math, is that fair? No way. Hendriken has sent several football players to the NFL, including Washington Redskins free safety, Will Blackmon. And on top of that, they have a defensive end who just committed to the University of Michigan…yes you read that right, Michigan. You know like the same college that Tom Brady went to…Michigan. So since the patriots have only sent one athlete to the NFL in history (Mike Cloud, former NFL running back), someone needs to explain to me how this competition is fair.
Unfair Match-ups in High School sports
October 30, 2016
One comment
November 29, 2016 at 9:18 pm
It seems that your chief complaint here is that private high schools have an unfair advantage over public high schools because private schools draw students from all over, while public schools draw from a much smaller area. And, based on that alone, you don’t believe private schools should be allowed to compete against public schools. Is that your position?
This very similar to a complaint I’ve heard here in Indiana. Here, some believe that private schools should not be allowed to compete in the state championship competition because private schools teams are often so much better than the public schools teams. I suspect THAT is really your complaint Jake. You probably believe that the private school teams are better because they draw students from all over.
First off, It would probably be illegal to exclude private schools from competing for the state championship. Many of those schools are religious schools. Do you really want to exclude all religious schools?
Many parents might prefer to send their children to private schools because I’m pretty sure that graduation rates are higher at private schools, and it is generally thought that private schools offer a better education than public schools. Plus, public schools are at least partially to blame for more kids pulling out of their schools. With school voucher programs, public school systems are willing to pay for part of a child’s private school tuition. If they don’t want their athletes jumping ship, stop supplementing their private school tuition.
At the college level, students are free to attend any school they want to as long as the school accepts them. Private colleges often have some of the top sports teams: Vanderbilt, Boston College, Stanford and Notre Dame are just a few examples. Should those schools be exempt from championship competition too, or from drawing athletes from a wide area?
In Indiana, high schools that win a state championship for two consecutive years are automatically bumped up to the next higher class for a couple of years so that other teams may have a chance to win. Is that fair to the athletes that will be on those teams the next couple of years, or to their fans? The next champion is not really the best team, they’re just the “next best team.” Those bumped schools and athletes are being punished for being good. If other schools want to win, they should learn how to win, instead of having the better teams eliminated from their competition so that they can win.
The New England Patriots have won a lot lately. Should they be sanctioned somehow for winning? What about the NY Yankees? They’ve won a lot too. The Chicago Blackhawks have won several Stanley Cups recently, Should the NHL make it easier for some other teams to win more?
in 1954 Milan, Indiana had a population of 1150 people. Milan HS was a very small school. Yet they won the State Championship in basketball that year. And that was the good, ol’ days of single-class basketball. Milan competed against schools that had more students enrolled than the entire town of Milan had people. Milan won because they had a good coach, not because the rules were changed to make it easier for them to win. If public schools want to win more championships, they need to stop whining about the private schools and figure out how to do it.