Page 31 - Alumni Horae: Vol. 93, No. 1 Fall 2012

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At the high school level, does that mean schools even-
tually will be turning away the very best athletes? Bohan
talks about the pressure of St. Paul’s athletic coaches to
be more involved than ever in the admission process.
Coaches are expected by prospective families to pay
closer attention to the applicants who come through
the door.
“If a family comes expecting to meet the squash coach
and that doesn’t happen for some reason, they will go to
another school,” he says.
“Nothing has changed except the culture,” asserts Kuta
of Andover. “We have the same facilities, the same stand-
ards, the same coaches, the same philosophy, but the
culture has changed. One of the major goals is sustain-
ability of interscholastic programs and trying to main-
tain the importance of the athletic program in the overall
Andover experience. None of us want the experiences at
our schools to be devalued. I get a sense in this culture
that [secondary] school experiences are being devalued;
they are more of a conduit.”
The issue of sport specialization is so prominent that
last year the New England Preparatory School Athletic
Council (NEPSAC) athletic directors held an entire
convention on the topic. A 2011 survey conducted by
Matt Lehrer of the University of San Francisco Sport
Management Master’s Program showed that “an
increase in single-sport athletes was expected by
74 percent of NEPSAC athletic directors in the next
five years with club sport coaches and parents viewed
as the main advocates in the drive to specialize.”
“We can’t ignore it, we can’t change it, we have to
adapt to it,” says former SPS AD Liesbeth Hirschfeld.
“The most difficult challenge is how schools adapt with-
out compromising the athletic experience.”
Ginsburg says that the move toward specialization at
the secondary-school level has an impact on families’
expectations for faculty and coach expertise as well.
“Everyone is looking for a competitive edge,” he says.
“The faculty is becoming more specialized to appease
parents who want an English department full of Ph.D.s
and a former Division I college player to be coaching the
lacrosse team. With this model, St. Paul’s is no longer a
destination. People are not satisfied with simply getting
to the School. All of this intensifies the investment.
Something’s got to give.”
Andover AD Mike Kuta goes as far as questioning
whether high school interscholastic athletics can be
sustained at all. He has long advocated the formation
of a league of independent schools who pledge to act
counter-culturally when it comes to allowing their
student-athletes to specialize and, going even further,
to accepting students into independent schools who
already identify themselves as specialists.
“If we don’t do something about it,” warns Kuta, “we
will all eventually go back to an intramural program.”
Scalise of Harvard is slightly more optimistic. He
believes that the era of specialization and college pres-
sure will test the resiliency of independent schools, but
that ultimately the missions of SPS and similar schools
will prevail.
“Athletics are a good vehicle for learning teamwork
and learning how to react when things don’t quite go our
way,” he says. “For those reasons, high school sports will
continue to exist. But will St. Paul’s attract the outstand-
ing hockey player of the future? I don’t know.”
“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.”
–Scott Bohan ’94
SPS Admission Director