Excerpts from MHSAA Executive Director John E. “Jack” Roberts’ keynote address Jan. 27, 2000, for the “Crisis in School Sport” colloquium sponsored by the Center for Sport Policy Studies at the University of Toronto.

My view of what schools are for and what is important in education has been shaped by my experiences as a participant in high school athletics, as a high school teacher and coach, as an administrator of educational athletics at the national and state levels, and as a parent of two students who were involved in school sports.

These experiences convince me that the following two points are valid and valuable:

(1) For elementary school students, the critical need in their education is reading proficiency. With it, students have the best chance to succeed in school then and later. Teaching reading skills should be our primary educational goal in elementary education, incorporated into all subject areas. Reading teachers, resources and classrooms should be non-expendable, no matter how limited the financial situation.

(2) For secondary school students, the critical need in their education is for motivation: not so much for the nuts and bolts of any particular subject, but for the hunger to learn and the motivation to pay the price to succeed. Students who have this motivation succeed then and in later life. Doing all we can to motivate students to stay in school, to like school and to do well in school should be our primary objective in secondary school education.

And that – motivating kids – is the role of interscholastic athletics, which should be considered just a non-expendable in our secondary schools as reading curriculum is in our elementary schools.

No, running and jumping and kicking and throwing and catching are not as important as reading, writing and arithmetic in secondary schools. However, the motivation these activities generate for students to stay in school and to like school and to do well in school in reading, writing and arithmetic is every bit as important. It is crucial, and non-expendable, no matter how limited we think funds may be.

We don't know if it's cause and effect, but we do know these are statistical links:

• Participants in school activities generally have higher grade point averages, lower dropout rates, better daily attendance and fewer discipline problems than do non-participating students.
• Participants in school athletics generally have higher grade point averages and lower rates of tobacco and alcohol use in their seasons of competition than out.
• Students who participate in two sports generally have higher grade point averages than those who participate in one; those who participate in three sports generally have higher grade point averages than those who participate in two.
• Participants in school activities feel better about schools and about education.

In a word, participants in school activities are motivated to stay in school, like school and do well in school. The programs that do these things for our students should not be cut; they should not be threatened.

Data just made available recently by a Canadian researcher connects participation in school sports to continued participation in sports in adulthood and higher income.

Here's a sampling of statements based on other studies:

Two researchers at East Carolina University published research in the bulletin of the National Association of Secondary School Principals in May of 1996 and concluded with this statement: "Achieving success in our society requires much more than academic success, so schools must provide for more than just the academic development of adolescents."

Professor Randy Testa at Dartmouth College stated in the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine in March of 1999: "The arts – and I'm considering athletics an art – are the place where people synthesize knowledge in new and interesting ways. The arts explore the ways in which we are not just educated, but ways in which we are human."

Professor Herbert Marsh made the following statement in the Sociology of Sport Journal in September of 1993 based on data collected in the 1980's from 10,613 randomly selected high school students: " . . . participation in sports favorably affected . . . social concept, academic self-concept, educational aspirations two years after high school, attending university, educational aspirations in the senior year, being in the academic track, school attendance, taking academic courses, taking science courses, time spent on homework, parental involvement, parental educational aspirations, taking math courses and taking honor courses."
Douglas Heath, an educator from Haverford College, has done some of the best research on this topic and published it in Fulfilling Lives:
Paths to Maturity and Success. He concludes, "School grades and achievement test scores predict moderately well which students will do well in school the next year, but they do not predict which students of average or above-average grades and test scores will succeed in later life. Extracurricular participation is a school's best predictor of an adult's success."

Taken together, one must conclude that if we care about kids' performance in school and their happiness and performance after graduation, we will supplement our curriculum with a full program of extracurricular activities, including athletics.
If we decide that high school athletics are expendable and won't be offered, we do at least these two things:

First, we condemn the students to less fulfilling and successful lives than more fortunate students in other places may have.

Second, we condemn the community in which they are educated to becoming less prosperous in the future than it is today. We exacerbate school and community problems. Local real estate suffers; local business declines.

If I were moving to a community and had the opportunity to select one school district with a full program of school sports and another with an incomplete program or no program at all, I would choose what most people would choose, and the other communities would suffer.

Some will argue that sports is a luxury for schools to sponsor. They will say, "Let the communities run the programs. It's too expensive for schools."

If we leave sports to the community, then we lose sports as a tool of education. We lose sports as a way to reach and motivate young people.

There is a difference between school and non-school programs. Throughout history, school sports has distinguished itself in the areas of scholarship, sportsmanship, safety and the scope of our programs. We have put academics before athletics, we have required high standards of behavior, we have protected the health of participants, and we have set sane limits on the number of games and the length of travel.

Much of the value of school sports results from the standards we have set for school sports. Many of the benefits of school sports result from the requirements we have made.

If we lower the standards, if we reduce the requirements, if we transfer responsibility to non-school groups, sports will be much less capable of doing good things for kids and they will have no potential of doing good things for schools.
In the summer of 1992, Thomas Boswell, the highly respected writer for the Washington Post, wrote a nationally syndicated column entitled, "Save Now, Pay Later." He wrote: "Shakespeare is great. But if you want to run a public school that works, there's no better place to spend your money than on a strong athletics program that involves as many students as possible in as many sports as possible."

And let's leave the final word to Canada. Samuel Freedman, former Chief Justice of Manitoba, has stated this: "A commitment toward intellectual excellence is a good thing. But a commitment toward intellectual and physical excellence is even better. It is in the realization of the latter objective that participation in athletics can play such a valuable role."