Page 30 - Alumni Horae: Vol. 93, No. 1 Fall 2012

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Cultural Shift
and the Future
College pressure is a factor in sports-related decisions,
according to administrators at St. Paul’s, including Scott
Bohan of the Admission Office. “The impact of college
sports is that families have expectations,” he says. “Kids
will take the fall off to prepare for their winter sport;
they won’t play a winter sport because they are travel-
ing with a club team on weekends. Our office buys into
the idea that kids need to be well-rounded, but they will
always have outside expectations. For our programs to
survive, we have to have students to fill them. Otherwise,
St. Paul’s needs to change.”
Dave McCusker ’84, headmaster at Cardigan Mountain,
an all-boys middle school in Canaan, N.H., sees the
dilemma even earlier than high school. Cardigan requires
its students to participate in three interscholastic seasons
each year, but that doesn’t stop applicants and their par-
ents from trying to get the school to bend its rules.
“The reality is that most of the best athletes are play-
ing one sport or maybe two sports, but many schools’
criteria is out of step with the reality,” says McCusker.
“Families will come in and say they’d like for their son
to continue to play one sport on weekends. We tell them
we understand, but we need to be really clear about our
commitment to what’s in the best interest of our boys –
a more diverse experience. We say, ‘If this is what you
feel you must do, then this is probably not the right
place for you.’”
“There is far more pressure to specialize in one sport
these days,” says Reckford, a decorated tri-sport SPS
athlete who is now the CEO of Habitat for Humanity.
“Both of my high school son’s varsity coaches (sched-
ules don’t allow him to play three sports) want him to
play only their sport. Many of the players he competes
with have specialized for years at this point. I would love
to turn back the clock on this trend, but I don’t know
how to stop it other than refusing to play along. The
challenge is similar to SAT coaching; I don’t like it, but
parents get scared that everyone else is doing it and
then the bar keeps going up in an unhealthy way.”
Of the 319 alumni who responded to the survey, 52.6
percent played at least two sports at the varsity level.
Seventy percent, 218 of 308, who answered a question
about their sports decision-making said college pres-
sure did not play a role in which sports they pursued.
But expansion on their yes/no replies revealed that
college pressure was indeed a factor, particularly for
athletes pursuing hockey and crew. College admission
pressure also factored into decisions to forgo athletic
seasons in favor of additional time to study and prepare
college applications. A majority (84.1 percent) responded
that they feel St. Paul’s is a school that encourages
athletic excellence while 87.6 percent said they played
fewer than three sports because they were skilled at
fewer than three sports. Refreshingly, 91.4 percent
answered that they played high school sports because
they loved them.