Pubdate: Sun, 10 Dec 2006
Source: Metrowest Daily News (MA)
Copyright: 2006 MetroWest Daily News
Contact:  http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/619
Author: Brooke De Lench, author of Home Team Advantage:  The Critical 
Role of Mothers in Youth Sports  (HarperCollins Sept. 2006) and 
editor-in-chief of  MomsTeam.com.

DRUG TESTING NOT BEST USE OF FEDERAL MONEY

On Tuesday, John Walters, the White House director of  National Drug 
Policy, and Deputy Secretary of Education  Ray Simon, announced with 
great fanfare at a high  school in Florida that $8.6 million in 
federal money  had been earmarked for student drug testing programs 
across the country.

That money would be better spent to fund programs  designed to 
increase participation in after-school  sports programs that could 
reduce drug usage by our  teens and stem the epidemic of childhood obesity.

There is an urgent need to reform the interscholastic  sports 
programs in the nation's public middle and high  schools to provide 
for full inclusion.

The current public high school model A one first-year  team, one 
varsity, one sub varsity A might have made  sense at the time it was 
adopted in 1924, when the  number of roster spots was roughly equal 
to the number  of those who wanted to play. But it makes no 
sense  today, when the number of those who want to continue  playing 
sports in middle school and high school far  exceeds the finite 
number of spots available.

It is especially important for teenagers to know that  they belong, 
that they fit in. Cutting tells teenagers  that they don't fit in, 
that they don't belong. This is  the wrong message to send during 
adolescence. As the  most prominent of all high school 
extracurricular activities, athletics continues to confer on 
its  participants the highest levels of status and prestige  in our 
teenage culture. The feeling by athletes that  they are special tends 
to lead to disharmony, the  creation of cliques, and to reinforcing 
the jock culture, not to promoting feelings of community, 
full  inclusion, and cooperative learning that schools work  so hard 
to instill. Adopting a policy of full inclusion  would be especially 
beneficial for teenage boys, for  whom sports would provide an outlet 
for their  aggression and help them connect socially with other  boys.

According to a February 2006 Gallup Youth Study, one in  five teens 
is now overweight with only 21 percent of  teens claiming to 
participate in sports or recreation  five to six days a week, and 
only 19 percent of our  teens participating in vigorous sports or 
physical  activity five to six days a week. Children who are 
cut  from sports teams will not exercise as frequently as  they would 
if they were playing sports; they are much  more likely to spend 
their afternoons watching television, becoming obese, and getting into trouble.

Another recent study found a positive association  between playing 
interscholastic sports and an increase  in the number of an athlete's 
friends who are  academically oriented. The study also found that 
participation in interscholastic sports "significantly  increased 
social ties between students and parents,  students and the school, 
parents and the school, and  parents and parents... and a reduction 
in illicit drug  and alcohol use."

Signs that the time to eliminate exclusion from school  sports teams 
surfaces on a daily basis. This week marks  the conclusion of the 
2006 fall school, club and town  sports seasons. If the nation's 
newspapers are any  guide, it was the most troubled and violent 
youth  sports season on record.

A policy of full inclusion for interscholastic sports  at the middle 
and high school level would also  eliminate one of the principal 
reasons for parental  misconduct in youth sports.

Given the intense competition for the limited roster  spots on high 
school teams, no wonder so many parents  are led by our 
winner-take-all society to act in  inappropriate ways A to become 
violent when they see  their child's chances at winning one of the 
coveted  spots threatened by a coach who decides to sit him or  her 
on the bench.

It simply makes no sense whatsoever from a public  health standpoint 
to continue the cutting policy that  contributes to an overall 
decline in physical fitness  among adolescents and young adults and 
does nothing to  combat drug use by keeping teens busy in 
after-school programs such as sports.
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MAP posted-by: Elaine