Academics, recruiting: Are athletics overemphasized at local high schools?

… some schools bring in students just for athletics 

As a person who coached football for almost a quarter of a century, I always believed that sports had some intrinsic educational value.

However, as a person who has also written about sports for more than a quarter century and is now in the twilight of my life, I am now cynical about the value of athletics to high schools and colleges. I think that too often we lose sight of the fact that athletics are an unessential component of our educational system.

Athletics are important for students 

The local farce dealing with private and public schools being in the same conference illustrates the ridiculousness of the system. My story about the Laurel Highlands public schools battling the private schools resulted in 3,700 page views, which is more than I have ever had in a two-day period.

Why? Athletics are very important for many people, and for young athletes, that is very positive. Athletic competition teaches teamwork, discipline, commitment, goal-setting, and more. It also provides excitement for high school students who may not have the academic skills to excel in the classroom.

As long as the athletics are kept in perspective.

That does not always happen.

Attracting Baptists to Catholic school

About a decade ago, I saw an advertisement in the Tribune-Democrat Friday night football supplement that focused on the Bishop McCort High School homecoming court.

It showed pictures of those in the court, which was nice, but it also noted the parish or church to which they belonged. I was interested to note that a number of them belonged to Baptist churches in the Johnstown area, while McCort is, and has always been, a Catholic school.

In addition, McCort, previously known as Johnstown Catholic until the 1960s, has always had a strong academic tradition for which they have been justifiably proud -- as well as an athletic tradition. The academics have always been a selling card for those who wanted to attend McCort then, and they are also one today.

Baptists were black athletes

However, these students were also African-Americans -- Blacks -- and all of them were athletes. I had a number of questions in my mind when I saw these photos.

The first is why they were attending McCort when the tuition there is high and public schools have none. The truth is that the private Catholic schools offer financial aid to families that cannot afford to pay the tuition.

My next question had to do with why Catholics were offering financial aid to families that belonged to Baptist churches. True, Protestants have always been allowed to attend these schools, but few have done so until these families started to trek to McCort.

As a private school, McCort can offer aid to whomever it wants. However, at that time, they were part of the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese education system and were receiving money from that organization. As such, all Catholics in the diocese who belonged to a church and donated to it had an interest in knowing why some Protestants were being offered aid that might have gone to a Catholic family.

In short, few Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians or any other mainstream Protestants have actually attended McCort over the years.

I read a story later that said that the parents of the Baptist children wanted them to attend a private school because the academics and discipline were better than the public schools in the area. That was an obvious slap at Greater Johnstown. As a public school, Johnstown has to accept students of a variety of academic skills, and some have deficiencies.

In addition, if the private schools have discipline problems with a student, school authorities can always send that difficult child to the public schools to deal with in any way it can.

Value is not for diversity

The bottom line for this is simple. These Baptists were valuable for McCort only because they had tremendous athletic skills. At least two of them have become NFL players -- and one of them has paid for scholarships to McCort for those students, which is certainly commendable.

I bring this up because the goals of schools often become skewed. Bringing in these students did not hurt Bishop McCort's academic mission, but it certainly led to questions about its priorities. While it is good to increase diversity within a school, would that have occurred if these students have not been outstanding athletes and had simply been Black members of a Baptist Church?

That is one of many reasons that I am cynical about high school athletics. Schools throughout Pa. try their best to entice athletes to attend their schools, whether it be a charter in Philadelphia that is nothing more than a Div. I breeding grounds for athletes or any other private school.

That is wrong.