Page 28 - Alumni Horae: Vol. 93, No. 1 Fall 2012

28
accessible, and it has leveled the playing field in that
everyone is sending video for evaluation.
Scalise uses an Easter basket metaphor to explain the
challenge facing colleges with record numbers of applicants.
“It used to be the well-rounded renaissance student
[who caught the attention of college admissions officers],”
says Scalise, who has been at Harvard for 34 years, the
last 12 of them as AD. “Gold eggs are more attractive than
pink eggs, and families are realizing they have to do more.
While every school takes a lot of attractive baskets, the
ones that really stand out are the ones with a few gold and
silver and bronze. Colleges are willing to go with fewer
eggs of higher quality.”
Hence the pressure for high school athletes to focus
their attention on what they do best, and the resulting
effect on interscholastic athletics.
“It it better or worse?” asks Scalise, noting that colleges
are not to blame, but are just reacting to the times. “It’s
better for kids who excel, but it is worse for the aver-
age kid.”
Andover Athletic Director Mike Kuta talks about inde-
pendent schools’ efforts to be “good at everything.”
“We have 772 varsity spots a year, but admissions can’t
bring in enough students to fill the spots – so we absolutely
depend on the multi-sport athlete,” he says. “But the num-
ber one reason high schools are facing issues in athletic
program sustainability is college pursuit. The sense is
that it’s almost impossible to get into school. Kids and
their parents feel they have to be specialized to go to their
school of choice. The investment for families is incredibly
high because the recruited athlete model does work.”
Reality Check
Just this year, the St. Paul’s School Office of College
Advising looked at recruited college athletes who had
already committed to Division I programs and determined
that they are all multi-sport participants, casting doubt on
the idea of specialization as the path to college. And in
early October, the School welcomed researcher Andrew
Watson, founder of Translate the Brain, who presented
seven ways for students to study less and achieve better
grades. One of those principles urged students not to
over-study. “If you can understand the concept in three
problem sets,” Watson told the students, “then don’t do
nine.” If the same concept applies to athletics, then play-
ing a sport year round won’t increase productivity any-
more than playing the same sport for six months. In fact,
one of the most alarming results of youth sports special-
ization is the frequency of repetitive strain injuries.
According to the National Center for Sports Safety,
“overuse injury, which occurs over time from repeated
motion, is responsible for nearly half of all sports injuries
to middle- and high-school students.”
“The problem is that everyone thinks they are in the
running, when the reality is that it’s a very small percent-
age of high school athletes for whom athletics will be a
factor in the college process,” says Ginsburg, co-author
of the book Whose Game Is It, Anyway?, who has studied
the sport specialization phenomenon extensively. “Everyone
is using that extreme as the model – but it doesn’t fit the
broad population. And it’s not even clear that something
like specialization to get the edge actually helps perfor-
mance. There’s the risk for overuse injury and burnout.”
Numbers support Ginsburg’s theory. An NCAA proba-
bility chart used to estimate the likelihood of high school
athletes competing at the college level is telling: 3.3 per-
cent in women’s basketball; 3 percent in men’s basketball;
6.1 percent in baseball; 11 percent in hockey; 5.7 percent
in football; and 5.5 percent in men’s soccer. Lacrosse
Magazine, the official publication of US Lacrosse, ran an
article in its October 2012 issue that gave a less-than-
one-percent chance for any male high school lacrosse
player to earn a college scholarship, and females only
a 2.1-percent chance. In that same article, writer Matt
Forman quoted a recent Wall Street Journal article that
asserted “any high school athlete has a six-percent chance
of playing college varsity sports in any division.”
“The scholarship is no longer the goal,” says Kuta of
Andover. “Now athletics is just a way to get an edge – to
get in.” And the better the athlete at one sport, the better
that edge – in theory, at least.
the Independent
School Mission
At independent schools like St. Paul’s, the mission
remains unchanged – focus on developing the whole
child, which means attention to academic excellence,
participation in a robust athletic program, involvement
in many other areas of the School, including arts and
clubs, and the “eagerness to bear the burdens of others”
through the community outreach requirement.
“The more you offer, the more it takes kids away,”
cautions Bohan. “We are a medium-sized school with
big-sized programs.”
Ginsburg worries that as independent schools fight
against the specialization tide to preserve their missions,
parents will be forced to choose for their children between
a well-rounded independent-school education and the
demands of year-round athletics.
“I’m wondering if specialization is going to make kids
not come to a school like St. Paul’s,” says Ginsburg.
“Families will have to decide between a decent public
school where their children can continue to pursue one
thing or invest in the residential-quality experience of
an institution like St. Paul’s.”
SPS AD Heitmiller argues that the benefits of pure
athletic creativity get lost when focusing on one sport
forfeits an athlete’s opportunity to transfer skills and
best practices between sports.
“Specialization is a shame,” says Heitmiller. “It takes