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USA Today
6 days ago
- Sport
- USA Today
'Sportsmanship is not sexy': Have we lost the purpose of high school sports?
'Sportsmanship is not sexy': Have we lost the purpose of high school sports? Show Caption Hide Caption Little leaguer hit by ball is quickest to console pitcher who hit him At a 2022 Little League World Series game in Texas, Tulsa player Isaiah Jarvis took a hit to the head and then consoled the pitcher who hit him. USA TODAY Elliot Hopkins has centered his career around a term he feels should embody high school sports. For more than a quarter-century, he has worked on initiatives around the country to promote it at games. Go to your local one, though, and you might not see it. "Sportsmanship is not sexy," says Hopkins, director of student services for the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS). "Strangely enough," he says, "this is why sportsmanship really matters: Some people just don't get it because of what they see at other levels or schools in their state or conference. Some parents are bad actors. And then the kids get the same vibe, and then they carry it out into the field. And then you mix in some coaches who don't understand that education-based sports is just that: Education-based." Witness a March basketball playoff game between two Pennsylvania schools – Meadville and Uniontown. A technical foul on the court led to a brawl in the stands among adults. It spilled onto the court. Arrests were made and fans were led off in handcuffs. As spring sports conclude their postseasons through the end of May and into June, state associations and administrators hold their breath. On-campus incidents like this not only occur with frightening regularity, but they sharply distort the deep-rooted message that is the backbone of high school sports. "People immediately think our role is to get students effective for the next level, which is college or major league baseball," Hopkins says. "It's quite the opposite. We believe what we do makes a young person a better human being and a better contributor to society." Instead, emotion, aggression and me-first aggrandizement can interlock into an ugly mess with so much seemingly on the line: NIL money, next-level participation, pay-for-play opportunities on travel teams and social media reputations. How can more kids and parents be better examples and better understand the core values of school-based sports? USA Sports shares perspective from Hopkins' decades-long career and from coaches and leaders who spoke at March's Project Play Summit in Berkeley, California, about the crossroads high school athletics faces. 'One of the last free options': High school sports connects communities and can save lives The goal of Project Play, a national initiative from the Aspen Institute, is to build healthy communities for kids of all ages, races and economic backgrounds through sports. We can think of high school athletics in a similar fashion. Studies have connected them with higher attendance and academic achievement. But prep sports also cuts to the core of our being and sense of belonging. It's a place where we band together to face our most intense rivals, but also one where we shake their hands afterward and where our parents cheerfully sell them and their supporters tickets and hot dogs. Go to rural Virginia, though, and you find moms and dads selling cupcakes and donuts to pay for referees jerseys and lining materials for the field. For every team with million dollar donors to help build fields, there are many others who play at city or regional parks. They depend on the experience. "School-based athletics is one of the last free options to participate," says Franky Navarro, California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) commissioner of Oakland, California. It's a city with a sharp divide in socioeconomic status between zip codes. "It provides opportunity for students," he says. "It builds community and depending on where you're at, it can also serve as violence prevention." According to the most recent survey results from the NFHS, high school sports have more than 8 million participants, a rise from 444,248 since the coronavirus pandemic, an especially dark period for children. During the first 10 months of COVID, 5,568 youth between the ages of 5 and 24 died by suicide, according to the National Institutes of Health. "We had kids taking their own lives because they can't see their teammates," Hopkins says. "We had kids not eating as well as they normally do because, in some cases, they get their best meals when they go to school (and) their best adult supervision is when they have coaches around them. "Ninety-five percent of our kids, if not a higher number, when they hang up their high school jersey, they're done. They're not going on to the next level. They're not going to play in college. They're just gonna be regular people. How have we impacted them for four years?" 'Where were the adults?' High school sports are a chance for us to set better examples We play in front of people we might run into at the grocery store, mall or post office. We see teachers and local Little Leaguers in the bleachers much more often than college coaches. It can be an opportunity to show how much we have grown, but also how far we have to go. "What's going on in high school is a microcosm of what's going on in society," Hopkins says. "We see people cheating. There are fights at games (at the) college and professional level. That's what our kids see, and that's what they want to mirror. A prominent basketball player pushes somebody because of a hard foul, that gives credence. It's like a dog whistle that tells some kids they can do the same thing – because he does it, it must be OK. And it's not OK. We don't do a good enough job to hone in on that." These games center around raw emotion that tests human sensibility. Taunts and gestures can begin on social media earlier in the week, heightening everyone's awareness of what's ahead, "so come Friday night football, there's gonna be a fight in the stands," Hopkins says. He says in recent years, students in Indianapolis have shown up for baseball games against a Jewish school with swastikas on their cheeks, while others in New Mexico have thrown tortillas at a team comprised of predominantly Native American players. A mostly white team in Coronado, California, was stripped of a regional championship when spectators behaved similarly against Latino players. "Where were the adults?" Hopkins say. "Who thought that'd be funny or would be a good idea? And you wonder why the first hard foul or that first pitch is up near the chin of somebody." A number of states, including Illinois, New Jersey, Hawaii and Virginia, have adopted zero tolerance policies, resulting in immediate ejection and further discipline against hate speech directed at sex, race, religion, creed, age, national origin, ancestry, pregnancy, marital or parental status, sexual orientation or disability. All 51 high school associations, including the District of Columbia, have policies for curbing poor spectator behavior in general. In California, two former NBA players, Robert Horry and Matt Barnes, were ejected from their sons' games for yelling at officials in the last two years. Video showed Horry shouting, "Hey ref … you suck!" while Barnes confronted a student broadcaster for the other team. The CIF recently instituted two bylaws: adult spectators must stay away for three games if ejected; and if you assault a game official you're done attending California high school sports. "It's sad that we had to put them in place," says Ron Nocetti, the CIF's executive director. "And we literally had people say, 'Well, that's not fair.' I mean, wait, you're telling me that you can go and physically assault someone in a parking lot, which we saw happen after a baseball game, and you think you have the right to then come back to our events?' "It's also why we talked about wanting to get more involved in sports at the younger ages. Just look at all the videos you see out there. There's referees literally been chased around basketball courts after games. I mean, that's how sad it has gotten." Coach Steve: Dan Hurley's words could improve parent, coach behavior at games 'Bigger than yourself': High school sports can help us discover who we are The CIF is only authorized to govern ninth through 12th grade athletics, but Nocetti wants to see sports played at every middle school in California. That way, affiliated high schools could partner with them and send their players in to mentor and coach. "Then these students are looking up to those students," he says. Seated with him on stage at Project Play was former University of California soccer player Ari Manrique, who has coached girls at Berkeley High. Manrique was a star who travelled as a member of the U.S. national team at the U-15, U-16 and U-17 levels. But at the end of her career at Cal, she had to medically retire and found herself using her psychology coursework to fully understand her younger athletes. Some days, she says, she went in with a full practice plan but needed to lighten it up after her players were dragging from, say, a chemistry test. "It's not always gonna be 'Go, go, go,' " she says. "It's hard to be a teenager and I think teenagers are feeling that in the ever-changing world that we have – with social media and everything else. Students who already have so much in the education space, now you're asked me to practice after class? Like, 'No, no way.' And they kind of can get lost in this. "I was able to find my love for the sport again in a tough time and see the girls go from maybe deciding to quit after freshman year to seeing them at senior day, they've made it all the way through. And they have no plans of playing in college, but they have a nice group of friends. They got something out of it. They learned. They became a better person because of it." She also has perhaps realized that along her own elite path, taking online courses away form the traditional high school setting, she had missed out. "I think there's something to be said about playing a high school sport, being a part of something bigger than yourself," she says. During an interview earlier this year, USA TODAY Sports asked Luis Robles, a former USMNT goalie and the technical director of MLS NEXT, if he encouraged teens within his youth soccer organization to play the sport in high school. MLS NEXT only recently added a tier to accommodate a prep schedule. "I would stop short of encourage; it's just allowed," Robles said. "I think what we encourage is them to identify the best environment possible for them to develop. And what we've identified as what would be the best environment is where are the best coaches? And if you're under that coach for as long as possible, and you're competing with the best possible competition that aids your development." Hopkins would argue that travel coaches who ask players to skip high school for their team have an educational obligation, too. "I'm not saying those opportunities aren't good for children," he says. "You've got to finish the sentence. They also have to mirror what we're trying to teach because if they never get to play at the high school level, and they just run their career in youth sports and travel ball and things like that, they have to make sure those kids are ready for life as well." Coach Steve: Is it worth it? 10 questions teen athletes need to ask if they play travel sports High school sports is now about NIL; what about sportsmanship? It has all suddenly become much more of a business. Navarro, the CIF Oakland section commissioner, has found himself asking former collegiate athletes in his office to help students figure out the landscape of Name, Image and Likeness. NIL has exploded into a money-making opportunity. High school athletes, depending on their state, can create their own brand and try to profit off of it. The chances increase when they get to college, especially if they are top recruits. "What happens if you get a deal, what do you do?" Navarro says. "I think for many of our students that never have had the opportunity to earn income, it becomes a challenge when they do arrive at a college level and are beginning to earn." Hopkins, 67, who played on the defensive line at Wake Forest from 1975 to 1979, doesn't see the system as sustainable. "You just can't keep doing this long term, because what happens is you and I are teammates and you get a bigger deal than I am, but I'm blocking for you," he says. "I'm like, 'What the heck? You wouldn't be getting any money if I didn't block for you. I need more money so you can do your job,' and the whole locker room becomes frazzled, and then no one trusts each other, no one wants to work for each other. They're out for themselves." To him, NIL is be another disruptive force to that magic "s" word he and NFHS are holding up these days like a placard. "Sportsmanship is a demonstration of fair play, respect and gracious behavior," he says. "We have not seen a lot of stories of that. And it's not a political thing. It's just where we are right now as a country, and we need to get back to the middle, because if you raise a bunch of kids who don't have fair play, respect or gracious behavior, we're going to end up raising and allowing those kids to grow up having kids with little bit of a different attitude, and that's gonna to kill the sport. "And you can fill in the blank of whatever sport it is." Steve Borelli, aka Coach Steve, has been an editor and writer with USA TODAY since 1999. He spent 10 years coaching his two sons' baseball and basketball teams. He and his wife, Colleen, are now sports parents for two high schoolers. His column is posted weekly. For his past columns, click here. Got a question for Coach Steve you want answered in a column? Email him at sborelli@
Yahoo
22-04-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
ESPN wants kids to enjoy playing sports again and in investing $5 million to push effort
Over the past decade — and especially since the COVID-19 pandemic — participation in organized youth sports has been steadily declining. Experts cite numerous reasons for this trend — the most prevalent being things like lack of access to facilities or programs, onerous costs, time constraints and the pressure to win and/or excel, among others. The outlet that bills itself as the network that serves sports fans "Anytime. Anywhere," ESPN, is determined to do something about this unfortunate trend. Last month, the media giant announced that, in collaboration with NBA superstar Steph Curry and wife Ayesha Curry's Eat. Learn. Play. Foundation, it was spending $5 million on a year-long initiative called 'Take Back Sports' — with the stated goal of getting more kids to play sports and, even more importantly, have fun while doing so. The announcement was made at the Aspen Institute's Project Play Summit — where ESPN serves on the '63X30' committee. The committee's goal is to have 63% of kids playing sports by 2030 — a rather ambitious goal based on recent statistics. According to data from the Sports & Fitness Industry Association and the Aspen Institute's 'State of Play 2024' report, only 38% of kids ages 6-12 played sports on a regular basis in 2023. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reported that, in 2022, only 33% of children living in poverty participated in youth sports. And the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that the percentage of high school youth playing on at least one sports team dropped from 57% in 2019 to a 21st-century low of 49% in 2021. 'It's time to take back youth sports from a system that has prioritized profit over well-being,' said Kevin Martinez, Vice President of Corporate Citizenship at ESPN. 'Travel leagues have overtaken recreational leagues, specialization has replaced multisport play, and winning has come at the expense of fun. We need to shift the focus back to what matters — making sports accessible, enjoyable and rewarding for all kids. With ESPN's deep sports expertise and unwavering commitment to community impact, we are uniquely positioned to help drive this change to elevate the conversation, invest in meaningful solutions and unite stakeholders to reimagine youth sports for the next generation.' Martinez explained that the $5 million investment ESPN is making will target the following areas: 1. Community recreational leagues, where kids of all skill levels and backgrounds will have a place to play. 2. Quality training for coaches so they can develop the skills critical for helping make sports enjoyable for kids. To this end, ESPN is teaming up with Positive Coaching Alliance and the National Recreation and Park Association as part of the 'Million Coaches Challenge' to provide training to coaches throughout the country. 3. Encouragement of multisport play in an effort to prevent injuries and burnout. By playing multiple sports, kids will develop more rounded skills and become better all-around athletes. develop into stronger athletes. Among the multisport programs that ESPN is investing in are the Boys & Girls Clubs of America ALL STARS program, as well as 2-4-1 Sports. 4. Promoting fun in sports, which is the most critical component for getting kids to participate in sports and stay with them. According to a study by the National Institute of Health, children cite 'fun' as the primary reason for participation in organized sports — and that its absence is the No. 1 reason while they'll stop participating in a sport. Megan Buning, a teaching specialist at Florida State University in the Interdisciplinary Center for Athletic Coaching and a former All-American softball pitcher at the University of South Carolina, specializes in the crossover of sports and classroom concepts, and strategies to improve coaching and teaching practices. She's also a wife, mother and youth sports coach. While she believes strongly in the overall benefits of youth sports, she's also seen firsthand what happens when they go awry. 'Unfortunately, I see young athletes burning out because they feel pressure to constantly train or play,' said Buning. 'Sometimes this pressure is self-created, and other times the pressure is created by parents and/or coaches. If our youth are not allowed to rest, take a break from the sport, or to explore other activities, then they are more likely to quit the sport.' When young athletes — no matter their ability level — quit playing sports, Buning believes they lose out on an array of valuable life lessons. 'Athletes learn from a young age how to work toward a common goal and work through failure,' she explained. 'Athletes usually fail more often than they succeed in sports, and each time they fail and try again, they strengthen their ability to be resilient. Another benefit to youth sports participation is athletes learn discipline and develop a work ethic. Any amount of practice requires time management, practicing when you don't feel like it and doing the same things repeatedly. All of this teaches a work ethic and discipline that will benefit them later in life.' Buning lauds ESPN's commitment to helping increase youth sports participation and stressed that, beyond the corporation's efforts, parents play a critical role in ensuring that their kids' experiences are ones they'll remember fondly. 'For parents, one of the best ways to support their young athletes is to work on productive pre- and post-game discussions,' she noted. 'Parents can completely change how youth athletes respond and handle emotions with how they speak and respond to performances. Supportive, positive and encouraging conversations can be a huge factor in making sure they continue participating in youth sports.' This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: ESPN Take Back Sports campaign to promote fun in youth sports
USA Today
06-04-2025
- Sport
- USA Today
Sports lessons from Gary Hall Jr., trash-talking Olympian who lost everything in LA fires
Sports lessons from Gary Hall Jr., trash-talking Olympian who lost everything in LA fires Show Caption Hide Caption UConn and South Carolina will compete for the National Championship USA TODAY's Meghan Hall breaks down the upcoming matchup between the Gamecocks and the Huskies for the National Championship. Sports Seriously BERKELEY, Calif. — There was a point earlier this year, after his house — along with his livelihood and his worldly possessions — had vanished in a fiery blaze, when Gary Hall Jr. perhaps fully realized why he was a swimmer. 'Sport is not life or death,' the five-time Olympic gold medalist told USA TODAY Sports. 'It's entertainment. It really is, even at the Olympics. You've got so much invested by then. But still, at the end of the day, the world's not a better place because I swam fast.' He was sitting at a picnic table under a tent at the Project Play Summit. Coaches and leaders from across the youth sports landscape traveled to the University of California in late March in search of ways to keep kids playing amid what has become a $40 billion industry that often pushes them out. Hall, 50, was a late bloomer in a simpler era. He didn't join a year-round swimming program until he was 13 or 14. Less than 10 years later, his long and graceful body climbed to the top of the podium at the first of his three Olympics (1996, 2000, 2004) representing the United States. He had fun with talking trash to opponents to the point where it motivated an entire nation to want to beat him. Today, he is putting his life back together while living in a guest house near his sister's home in Encinitas, California. His swim school, where he taught 2-to-6-year-olds out of his backyard pool in Pacific Palisades, vanished, too, that day in January as wildfires ravaged Los Angeles. A father of two teenagers who have played sports, Hall Jr. spoke to USA TODAY Sports about his athletic journey and how looking back at it could be helpful to young athletes and their parents. He pulled out what remained of two gold medals he recovered from the fire — one from Atlanta, one from Athens. They were now melted together. This could be lesson No. 1. "Success,' he says, 'was a very humbling experience.' 'Extreme' sports: Our environment (and our parents) offer us an athletic path; we decide how to navigate it When he was winning medals, Hall used to wear silk boxing robes to the pool deck. He was poking fun at ego and convention. He had done it since he was a boy and Olympians would come to his local pool club to give motivational talks to him and his teammates. 'I was rolling my eyes, like, 'Yeah, OK, character development,'' he said. As a teenager, he wanted to be more like Tony Hawk than his father, three-time Olympic medalist Gary Hall Sr. Hall Sr. was as a swimmer in the 1968, 1972 and 1976 Olympics, and a two-time world swimmer of the year. Hawk was a pioneer of skateboarding, much more a fad in the 1980s than the crossover Olympic sport it is today. "To my dad, it was just a bunch of punk kids, which I loved about it,' Hall Jr. said. 'People asked, 'Do you want to follow in your father's footsteps?' No, to a certain degree, I took it for granted.' Hall's grandfather, Charles Keating Jr., was a collegiate swimming champion. Keating built a swim facility where Hall's parents met. He built another swim club in Phoenix, where the family moved when Hall was seven. There, the temperatures reached 120 degrees in the summer. Skateboarding lasted 15 or 20 minutes before Gary and his friends wound up in the water. 'It was almost because of extreme climate that I ended up being a swimmer,' he said. 'And once we were in the pool, I was always, you know, 'I'll race you from here to there.' '' That surge of adrenaline he got going head to head against a competitor became enough of a carrot to sustain him within a grueling sport. 'You spend the entire year training for one big meet,' Hall said. 'So the work-race balance is substantial, but it didn't matter. I loved that 1% of the sport, the race part.' 'Smash them like guitars': When the competition becomes fun Hall said his father never really taught him how to do a better flip turn or reviewed his races with him. He mostly just told his son to enjoy himself. Hall understood the advice when he watched footage of his dad behind the starting blocks as a highly-touted Olympian. His knee was bouncing up and down and the blood appeared to have drained from his face. 'He's just not having fun,' Hall said, 'and so what I interpreted was to be present, enjoy the atmosphere, the experience. And stress is a big part of that, and anxiety before the race and feeling sick to my stomach. And you just learn how to accept that as part of the overall experience. 'But really, I think it became a great attribute of mine that I had an ability to be present.' Each moment, he observed, whether you were lined up and ready to race or hanging out with your teammates, was a unique opportunity to relish. 'There's plenty of towel snapping in the locker rooms and trash-talking as a skinny, no good high school swimmer,' Hall said, his smile and bright blue eyes widening. 'And I didn't get good until the end of high school, so swimming at an elite level wasn't even a consideration.' As it all unfolded — the strong meet that led to a chance to swim at the university of Texas, the breakthrough that led him to the world championships and the 1996 Olympics — Hall Jr. became known as a showman. Before and after an Olympic win, he might wear a cape and shoot his arms up in the air in mock deference to Randy 'Macho Man' Savage, the wrestler he watched on TV as a boy. Before a highly-anticipated 4x100 relay race with Australia at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, he said very publicly: "My biased opinion says that we will smash them like guitars.' Swimming the last leg, he fell just short to Australian Ian Thorpe and the U.S. lost. 'Any Australian I ever will meet will want to talk about that relay and remind me that the Australians won that night,' Hall said. 'And what a great race.' Despite being diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes the year before, Hall won two gold medals at those Olympics. But when Hall won silver, one of the Australian swimmers recalled how he was the first American to congratulate them. All these years later, after he barely made it out of his house with his dog and his insulin, Hall heard from Thorpe. 'He was the third person that texted me, that reached out to me,' Hall said. "Two others just before him were family members. I'm wondering, how he found out before anybody? He's got an eye in the sky or something. 'But I mean that is also a great symbol of this sport. That this was an intense rival, but that bond that sport created has endured through tough wins, tough losses on both sides.' 'There's no one one size fits all': Embrace what your kid loves to do Hall used to look around the Phoenix Swim Club, and watch those parents, the ones who screamed and whose veins seemed to bulge out of their foreheads. You have likely seen them. 'The amount of pressure that I saw those kids endure was devastating,' he said. 'These kids really did great early on, and by high school they were just so burnt out, and there was no fun in it. And so I never wanted to put pressure on my kids when they came around. 'The tricky thing about this is that there is no one size fits all. There's some kids that don't need to be pushed, that are highly motivated and just are pushing themselves and want to be great, and other kids that just want to scroll, and so we're dealing with psychology.' 'Take it easy,' he says. 'Be a cheerleader, not a coach." Coach Steve: How phones are 'tanking' youth athletes' mental game His daughter, Gigi, joined the high school swim team as a freshman — 'swimming lite,' Hall said — swam for three years and now has a $17,000 scholarship to Savannah College of Art and Design. 'She's an artist, creative type, and I love that about her, but never had the killer instinct that would drive you to real success at sport,' he said. 'And totally OK with that.' His son, Charlie, a late bloomer like Hall, is a junior in high school trying to follow his father's path. It's one complicated by the House vs. NCAA case that could greatly reduce the number of collegiate roster spots. "He's training 10 times, 11 times a week and getting in extra workouts," Hall said. "He wants it, he's chasing it. "It can be done but it takes the right environment. I was fortunate more than any genetic inheritance to be in that swim club environment. They brought in great coaches. They knew what they were doing from running generations of youth sport programming. And if you don't have that, you're not gonna make it." There is no club swim team in Charlie's area of Santa Barbara County. He has to drive himself 45 minutes to get to practice, illustrating another issue confronting youth sports. The goal of Project Play is to provide kids with more access to sports across the country and have 63% youth sports participation nationwide by 2030. We are currently at 54%. There are needs for facilities and programs — both competitive and participatory — but also financial needs for kids who can't afford access. A major drive to meet the goal will be corporate partnerships, a point of emphasis at the Project Play Summit. Little League Baseball, for example, has a grant program with T-Mobile to help families seek help with registration fees, even those who can't pay for all of their kids to play. 'We're deploying a lot of educational resources: How to work with all kids, not just the best kids, not just your kid, but all kids,' Little League Baseball president and CEO Patrick Wilson told USA TODAY Sports. 'Even if you don't play that sport in high school, even if it's your second sport, it's still good because it'll help you. All those lessons you learn by not being the top dog. Because the reality is, there will be a time in life when you're not at the top.' As Hall learned, whether you are at the top is also a matter of perspective. Character traits learned in youth sports stay with you Hall knew the fierce winds were coming that day in January. He woke up to the sound of his pool cover flapping and spent 45 minutes wrestling it back into place. He was on a phone call with his scheduler when he saw a little smoke out a back window. A little more than 10 minutes later, he saw flames and baseball-sized embers plunging down the hill toward him and other houses starting to catch fire. He had only a few minutes to get out. 'People that do well in sport, it builds this kind of characteristic: it is remaining calm in chaos and clear headed,' he told the crowd at Project Play. 'And my response was extremely pragmatic. I felt like I knew it was time to go. Knew that I was abandoning everything, that it was unlikely that I would see any of it again, and just did what had to be done.' As Hall tries to rebuild his swim school, he is working on a sports betting platform for swimming, which he hopes to open up to all Olympic sports. He says a percentage of his potential earnings is earmarked for rebuilding youth sport programming in west Los Angeles. He has seen first-hand the transformative power of sports. He has gone from brash kid and athlete to understated parent and teacher. All of it has come on his own terms, shaping his life, and perhaps even saving it. 'It wasn't until later in life when you face obstacles like your house burning down, and everything you own and your business disappearing overnight, that those character traits that I learned as a 14-year-old in sport shine and allow me to process something like this in a totally different way that counterparts aren't able to,' he said. "And so I am extremely grateful for my sport experience. "I know that I wouldn't be handling this situation that I'm currently in the same way if I hadn't been through that." The 10 Olympic medals he won are beside the point. They are mostly gone now, anyway. Steve Borelli, aka Coach Steve, has been an editor and writer with USA TODAY since 1999. He spent 10 years coaching his two sons' baseball and basketball teams. He and his wife, Colleen, are now sports parents for two high schoolers. His column is posted weekly. For his past columns, click here. Got a question for Coach Steve you want answered in a column? Email him at sborelli@
