Bjorn Backlund, familiar with the European youth sports system, is pleased his three children can play competitive sports on school teams in the United States. In Europe and most of the rest of the world, sports teams are not affiliated with high schools or colleges.
“I’m glad they can play for the school,” says the Finland native, whose daughter Alex is a middle hitter-blocker for Coach Kelly Drobeck’s varsity volleyball team at La Jolla High.
In Sweden, whose sports structure Backlund is also familiar with, teens play for private clubs apart from their schools. “If you’re good at tennis,” he says, “you join an academy and play the heck out of yourself in tennis.” Backlund is both Finnish and Swedish.
In other parts of the world outside the U.S., similar holds true: In Mexico City and Tijuana, for example, there are some school teams, like in basketball and American football. But it is not a big system, like San Diego’s CIF Section is, and most young athletes play for club or academy teams unaffiliated with the schools they attend during the day.
This stands in stark contrast to the way things are in the U.S., where Homecoming, Friday night lights, and “The Hoosiers” are king.
And Backlund is happy about that. “Last year I went to my first Senior Night,” recounts the proud father, who acts as the “team dad” for his eldest child’s squad, clicking photos, maintaining the team website, and sending out news to fellow parents. “They honored the senior girls playing their last home game. It was very moving.”
Backlund, expressing himself with a distinguished accent, acknowledges the problematic issues that are reported in high school sports – the increasing number of transfers between schools, student athletes being declared ineligible after transfers, and the marketing and professionalization of services for young athletes, including personal coaches, highlight videos for college recruiters, and the like. But he sees those as the exception. “You’re talking about the elite athletes,” a small percentage of the pie, in his view.
Dave Jones, head coach of boys volleyball at La Jolla High, both court and sand, has taken part in discussions of the merits of interscholastic versus club and travel teams for several years. In his master’s degree program, which he completed a few years ago, the pros and cons of both systems were debated.
Jones, a classroom teacher on the seaside campus, has been vocal in his support of his teen athletes enjoying their high school experience by competing for their school.
“I can tell you that high school sports absolutely benefit from the training and intensity of club sports,” says the veteran coach. “However, club players bring many problems with them from club, as well, into the high school setting.”
For example, club players aren’t beholden to their school to remain eligible grade-wise for their non-school team. On school teams, students have to maintain a “C” average with no D’s to keep their eligibility. They also have to have a satisfactory citizenship grade.
In club sports, parents are paying premium fees for professional coaching, so they want to see results for the considerable money they are paying. The goal in many cases is progress toward gaining a college athletic scholarship. With the money and professional coaching come increased pressure on the student athlete to perform. Parents want to see their daughter or son playing plenty of game minutes, as well as a position in the starting lineup.
When these elements are carried over to the school setting – which isn’t immune to its own brand of issues – they can result in the proverbial nightmare parent, who harangues the coach about their child and loses any perspective on the team as a whole. Parents may be well-intentioned, but their tunnel vision about their athlete can make life miserable for everyone else.
David Green, a defensive line coach for the Vikings’ varsity football team, describes a method for dealing with an unrealistic parent. “The parent says their kid has great skills and deserves to start. Okay, in practice, I line him up against the top players on the team, and let them face off,” says Green. “When they see their son is overmatched, they say, ‘Oh, I didn’t realize, coach. I didn’t know.’”
Green says he answers parents who push only for the good of their son or daughter, “I’ll do what’s best for the team.” Looking intent, he repeats, with feeling: “I’ll do what’s best for the team.”
In this day and age, with increasing pressures on high school athletes to gain an athletic scholarship to college, another element can combine with parents’ singular focus on their child’s success on the team. Parents who have split up, with one parent living apart from their child – usually dad – may vie against each other to show their continuing devotion to the child, despite the split, using sports involvement as a tool. This can result in the overactive father attending team practices and trying to catch the coach’s ear. The parents may no longer work together as a unit, instead competing, with the athlete caught in the middle. While both sports and club teams have their advantages and disadvantages, Jones, the classroom teacher, points up the pluses of playing for one’s school. “When you play for a school,” he says, “you represent something bigger than yourself. When you play for a club, you are basically a free agent representing yourself.
“Much of the time, sportsmanship, character, responsibility, and the importance of the whole over the individual come through school athletics more than non-school teams.”
Lisa Griffiths, head coach of field hockey at La Jolla High, has one returning starter on offense this year who had to work out problems with her club soccer coach. While the junior has played for the Vikings in the fall sport for the past two years, her club coach had been making it difficult for her at the end of the past summer to practice with the school field hockey team.
“Things will work out for the better,” Griffiths, in her second year at La Jolla, said.
With the added opportunities of playing school or club sports, tough choices sometimes have to be made. Madeleine Gates, an All-CIF performer in volleyball for the Vikings, led the LJHS basketball team to the CIF finals as a sophomore.
The athletic, 6’3″ student, meanwhile, was maintaining her involvement in club volleyball as well as playing for the school team. A top student, she was carrying an academic load of five Advanced Placement classes and a science class accredited through Mesa College.
Things became too much, and Gates made the difficult, but necessary, choice to drop basketball and concentrate on her number-one sport. Her decision and her focus helped her reach her goal: a full volleyball scholarship at UCLA, where she now plays as a freshman in college. She committed to the scholarship during her junior year at La Jolla, thereby eliminating some of the further pressure that was coming from college recruiting.