Is it time to level the playing field for poor schools?
As competitive gap widens, officials in some states allowing schools with high poverty levels to drop down to lower athletic divisions
DES MOINES, Iowa — An hour before kickoff at a game this month at Hoover High School, the opposing football team pulled up and unloaded the large video monitor that would let its coaching staff analyze plays, moment by moment, throughout the game. The coaches at Hoover High, where most students qualify for free or reduced-price meals, would have to make do with watching the old-fashioned way. Another loss, a Hoover student told the principal, seemed imminent.
Hoover’s opponents ran 84 yards for a touchdown on their first play, the running back shedding Hoover’s smaller players like a video game villain. The game ended in a 35-7 loss, to no one’s surprise.
During the past decade, Hoover High School and Des Moines’ four other large public high schools have a cumulative record of 0-104 against rivals with more affluent student bodies from the Polk County suburbs, according to figures compiled by the Des Moines Register.
With all that losing, leaders in places like Des Moines are contemplating a change in how high school athletic teams are matched up against one another: What if the poverty level of a school’s student body was used to decide which teams it played?
The concept, now in use or under consideration in numerous American states and cities, turns on its head old notions of athletics as an equalizer. The thought of intentionally lumping poor schools into lesser divisions, separate from richer schools with fancy equipment, rankles some educators, who say it sends a terrible message. “Our kids don’t want to be classified as poor kids who have to play lower-level competition,” said Mitchell Moore, a coach at Roosevelt High School in Des Moines. “I’m a big believer that socioeconomics has nothing to do with catching a football.”
But at Hoover, where losing has gotten exhausting for players and fans alike, moving down to a lower division would be a welcome relief, many parents and students say. The idea of judging teams based on wealth may sound distasteful in concept, but the reality of losing night after night, year after year, feels far worse. And schools with extra resources for special training and technology, they say, simply do better on the
field — so why not acknowledge that in the matchups?
“On just about every Friday night, they outsize us, they outman us, and they outnumber us,” Sherry Poole, Hoover’s principal, said about the suburban powerhouses on the school’s schedule that routinely win state championships. “Your heart just kind of stops whenever someone gets crunched.”
Dustin Hagler, a 17-year-old senior who plays on both the offensive and defensive lines for Hoover High, and is also the senior class president, said that he saw students in the hallways who would make good football players, but that they consistently resisted his recruiting efforts.
“It’s hard when you lose,” he said. “But it’s not just losing. It’s almost like you feel beat down. Like the odds are stacked against you.”
Over the past few years, officials overseeing high school sports in states including Minnesota, Oregon and Colorado have added provisions allowing schools with high poverty levels to drop down to lower athletic divisions. Washington state will introduce the idea next year, and Iowa is considering it.
The debate over whether economic status should have a place in deciding a sports team’s competition has been fierce. The issue has led to awkward conversations among school administrators, parents and teammates, raising questions about fairness and the meaning of high school sports.
Supporters say the approach, intended to give poorer schools a better chance of winning games, will help students gain confidence. They also say it could reduce the risk of concussions and other injuries against teams with more expensive, elaborate training resources and access to better nutrition.
“We don’t feel like we are coddling these students; we feel like we are trying to put them on an even playing field,” said Peter Weber, executive director of the Oregon School Activities Association, which oversees high school athletics. “We need to match kids up with competition that is safe for them so they can walk out on a field and be competitive.”
But others, including many coaches, say the change adds new barriers for impoverished students, and suggests they are too weak or too poor to compete against richer rivals. Why, they ask, should students’ athletic potential be limited by their parents’ bank accounts? And some opponents say tinkering with longstanding athletic matchups in an attempt to even the odds is a way of babying young people — a “medals for everyone” mentality that undermines lessons in resilience and grit.
“They’re out there making do with what they have, and that’s the right thing to do,” said Gabe Murray, 19, a former Hoover football player.
Tom Farrey, executive director of the Aspen Institute’s Sports & Society Program, said the sports achievement disparity between wealthy suburban public schools and their urban counterparts has degenerated into “a competitive gap that is similar to the income gap” in the nation.
“The divide has always been there,” he said, “but it has widened.”
The disparity, experts say, is meaningful beyond the world of athletics because sports participation has been found to aid in academic success and college admissions, and is a predictor for professional success.
The discussion comes at a critical juncture for youth sports, where participation rates for many activities — particularly football — are in decline because of fears about brain injury and because children’s interests more than ever fall outside engagement in traditional sports, according to studies.
For the moment, switching leagues is not yet an option in Iowa, where the Iowa High School Athletic Association is scheduled to discuss the issue later this year. If a request by the Des Moines Public Schools and other districts is approved, Hoover and other schools could apply to drop down a division.