Parents need to be involved in sports

After reading my friend Quay Richerson's editorial last week, I feel sorry that we do not live in the ideal world that he depicts. Having "professional coaches" in our schools would be terrific. But the reality is that we hire coaches because they volunteered. There is no training on how to be a great coach, or any standards set forth that they will be measured by. You want to be a coach? All you have to do is raise your hand.

This is not to say that we are not blessed with some excellent, professional coaches, because we are. These coaches "get it" because that is the type of person they are, or they received training elsewhere. Several coaches I spoke to said that they NEVER received any kind of end-of-season review from the school administration. And we wonder why parents are getting involved? Heck, we can't even trust our kids with a priest these days, so we sure aren't going to turn them over to an untrained coach and walk away when we know there is NO accountability!

Quay's criticism of parental involvement, while true on occasion, does not reflect the majority of parents. There is a way to minimize the kind of parent involvement that he singles out in his column: hire trained coaches who are held to a code of conduct, given performance standards, and supervised by an athletic director (AD). Think about this: students spend more time with their coach than they do with any of their teachers, yet they are rarely supervised. Joe Hosang appears to be a very capable principal, but he should not be spending his valuable time overseeing sports. We need an AD to do this, and the school board will have to figure out a way to fund the position.

Until that time, parents are the only ones who do know what goes on in every practice, every team meeting, and every game. They hear it directly from their kids. To ask parents to trust a system that is dysfunctional, well, that is asking for a little too much faith. Having clear standards of what is expected of a coach will also help parents to know when they do need to speak up, and when they need to keep quiet.

We NEED sports for many reasons - to teach our kids how to win with class and lose with grace. Life is full of wins and loses so we might as well teach that to them now. How to build a team and work with others to achieve your goals is a great life skill that sports can provide. There are many other examples of how sports can prepare our kids for life as an adult.

If you think that school sports don't impact you because you don't have kids in our schools, think again. Any Realtor will tell you that the local schools play a big part in drawing new people to town. While the education program is most important, the sports program (and arts) play a role in a family's decision. Having a vibrant sports program in a small community like Sisters can help more people make the decision to relocate here, and buy some of the many homes on the market.

Consider this: the economic value of the middle school basketball tournament is estimated at $400,000! We should do much more to bring in this kind of sports tourism as there are MILLIONS of dollars that would be spent in our community. A successful school sports program (and the facilities to go with it) are crucial to this kind of economic boost. The chamber of commerce and city leaders should be pushing (and assisting) our school officials to enhance our sports program. So yes, our school sports affect EVERYONE in town.

We need to set standards, and make our coaches accountable to an AD so that parents can 'let the coaches coach' knowing that their child will be better prepared for life as a result. Our kids and the entire community will be better off for it.