Thank you Student Athletes

In Samantha’s junior year in college, she and a friend who had played collegiate level lacrosse decided to toss the ball around. The girl remarked to Sam Wow you play great--Were you on your varsity lacrosse team in high school? Sam shook her head no and said I haven’t picked up a stick since middle school. I wasn’t good enough to play at my high school. And the girl said What high school did you go to? And Sam said Garden City. The girl simply said Ohhhhh.

When Briana met with the student interviewer at Bucknell the conversation opened up in the following way:  So you come from Garden City—you must play lacrosse. And Briana said No. I dance. And the student interviewer said Wow I never met a kid from Garden City before who did not play lacrosse.

When Kara and I went down to Atlanta to meet with the admissions counselor at Emory University I asked him Why don’t you ever come to Garden City high school to speak with prospective students? He said there are just not enough students at Garden City high school who meet our academic criteria. My time is better served recruiting in Great Neck and Jericho and at the NYC private schools.     

Every year Garden City graduates students who go on to higher education. A good hunk of them attend Ivy League universities. And of those who attend Ivy league universities a very disproportionately high number of them used athletics as their “hook.” Few students attend Ivy and “new” Ivy league colleges from this town based on their standardized test scores and GPA. It is a sore spot not only for some students who see that athletic prowess opens doors closed to them, but also for central administration who is often discordant with the well-oiled athletic machine. There is resentment over the fact that Garden City athletes are not only stars on the field, but are also the stars of Ivy league admittance.

I think the anger is misdirected. If not for our student’s playing skills our school district’s overall academic rating would be greatly reduced. Garden City’s excellent school system is built on the back of its stellar athletic program and not so much on the back of its academic program. We should be angry and embarrassed that our academics do not equate with Great Neck or Jericho or the NYC private schools. We should be angry that the district produces few Ivy-league scholars while our athletic program manages to place students year after year in the best colleges and universities in the country. We should be angry that the coaches in this district prepare our students for the Ivy league better than the curriculum coordinators. Because it is not as though we that we do not possess both the pedagogic and economic resources to compete with lighthouse school systems—it’s that our central       administrative heads provide no beacon of light. No Ivy or “new” Ivy League admissions counselor rings Guidances’ doorbell and asks our brightest students to come out and play.

And so I am thankful for all the student athletes who attend Princeton and Harvard and Yale as well as a myriad of other “new-Ivy” and tier one schools. You are the constant that keeps my property value inflated. It is your sweat and repaired ACLs that keep the new home buyers buying. You keep the Garden City Ivy and “new” Ivy League admittance statistic higher than it deserves to be.

And as I read in the newspaper last week how the athletic budget was being cut again I thought—hmm our academic rating is the one really taking the hit. Cutting athletics undercuts academics—or at least in this town it does.