Page 26 - Alumni Horae: Vol. 93, No. 1 Fall 2012

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t here was a time when high school athletics
were played for the pure joy of competition
and the rewards of participation, when even
the smallest St. Paul’s School First Former was
assigned to one of the skill- and size-appropriate club
football or hockey teams, or to the most novice crew.
In those days, Sunday winter afternoons were spent
sandwiching as much pond hockey as possible between
morning Chapel and 5 p.m. Evensong.
“We were all required to play three sports, recalls
Bobby Clark ’61, who received the Gordon Medal as
the School’s best male athlete as a Sixth Former. “The
intramural program was much more important than
playing on the varsity teams. At any intramural game,
at least half the School was there cheering. The seventh-
team game was as important as the first-team game.
Sports were part of our education, where what we
learned on the fields and ice was transferable to other
facets of our lives. We played sports for the fun of
competing and learning how to win or lose.”
But times have changed. Today’s world of organized
youth sports has shifted the athletic landscape for many
students, making athletics more of an end than a means,
less about team lessons than individual markers of success.
The bottom line is this: High school sports are in trouble,
even at independent schools like St. Paul’s, which have
always operated against the prevailing culture by the pure
nature of the fully residential environment. But St. Paul’s
no longer lives in the bubble that existed before highways
eased the transition to interscholastic play, before the
St. Paul’s experience was a step toward college pursuit,
not the conduit to it. The real world has crept in, and it’s
taking athletes away from interscholastic competition at
an alarming rate.
The Numbers
The three-sport varsity athlete has long been the gold
standard of high school sports, combining a commitment
to participation with a quest for excellence. It may come
as a surprise to those who claim that “a dozen guys could
have won the Gordon medal in 1984,” but data shows that
the number of tri-varsity Sixth Form athletes at St. Paul’s
has shifted only negligibly over the last four decades –
from 10 in 1970; to 14 in 1980; to 18 in 1990; to 10 in 2000;
to 10 in 2012, with a low of eight in 2010-11.
But a closer look at the 10-year data of St. Paul’s School
athletic participation begins to tell another story, one
that shows a clear decline in the number of three-sport
athletes at the School, whether varsity, JV, or a combina-
tion of the two.
In the 2002-03 academic year, 49 girls played three
sports, but only eight of them were Sixth Formers and only
one was a tri-varsity athlete. Similarly, on the boys side,
50 boys played three sports that year, only 11 of whom
were tri-varsity Sixth Form athletes. In 2010-11, only one
Sixth Form boy was a tri-varsity athlete and only three
Sixth Form boys participated in three seasons at any level.
In 2011-12, only one Sixth Form girl competed on three
varsity teams and only one other played three sports.
In the last 10 years combined, only 76 Sixth Form
St. Paul’s girls have played three sports in a year – varsity
or JV. In that same timeframe, 101 Sixth Form boys have
appeared on three rosters. That’s only 177 Sixth Formers
(12.8 percent) out of 1,375 graduates over a 10-year span
who have competed in three seasons in their final year at
SPS. And, since 2007-08, only 24 of 693 Sixth Formers (3
percent) have participated in three interscholastic sports.
The modern debate about sports examines why high
school athletic directors are tearing their hair out when
it comes to filling roster spots – no matter what the level.
Specialization
and the College Squeeze
“Athletic programs are a product of what happens off
our campuses,” says Bob Low, athletic director at Groton
School in Groton, Mass., referring to the ever-growing
pressures from outside organizations that take high school
kids away from their schools’ athletic teams. Junior hockey
leagues have long plucked the brightest talent from the
prep school ranks. An October 2012 article in The New
York Times used soccer as an example of the same phe-
nomenon, citing a policy of the U.S. Soccer Federation