I have a proposal for the suits at IHSA headquarters. It’s a proposal that, if passed, will at once preserve the past and strengthen our future.
Here’s the gist: Before the first high school baseball game is played, each coach will be mandated to host a Championship Night. It can be held at the school’s lunchroom, auditorium, the nearest Hardee’s – anywhere but a casino, bar, strip club or house of worship. At Championship Night, topics such as sportsmanship and natural selection will be addressed. Then the head coach will personally place a shiny medal around each player’s neck. The inscription on the medal will read: “2008 State Baseball Champions” and will also include a bronzed rendering of the orphaned IHSA mascot, Add A. Tude. The evening will conclude with an IHSA-regulated celebration.
If this proposal gets rubberstamped by whomever rubberstamps such things, then it will do away with the expansion of classifications, set to be instituted next year. Since 1978, Illinois high school baseball has had two classes – Class A for the small-enrollment schools; Class AA for the bigger ones. Next year there will be four enrollment-based classes. Other sports are moving to three classes; football recently moved to eight.
What was the impetus for change? Most importantly, the new system will give more athletes the opportunity to experience the gratification of being called a champion. Self-esteem will assuredly spike, and more players will be afforded special treatment at the neighborhood barbershop.
The new plan also levels the playing field more precisely. The schools that barely qualified for Class AA will no longer need to play the schools that have to deport its underclassmen to another campus just to meet fire-code regulations. There will be no more David vs. Goliath, only David vs. a dude that kind of looks similar to David; Goliath vs. the meathead down the block with the twitching eye.
It is said that life values are taught through athletics, and this is a good one to teach: Don’t compete against anyone bigger than you or you might get hurt … or worse, you might not drink from the horn of victory, which, of course, would torpedo your confidence indefinitely. Certainly it is unrealistic to assume that a student-athlete who has been deprived of immediate gratification would work harder to obtain it.
Will a student-athlete have more success in life if he/she wins or competes in a championship game? Will the championship experience increase their sense of self 15 years later? I say if a 35-year-old is still puffy-chested about winning a high school championship, then that person didn’t learn a single thing about competing.
But what about the underdogs, the ones who were doubted and overlooked? So the underdogs train twice as hard together, in the offseason, during the season, in between commercials of American Idol. And maybe, just maybe, that team actually achieves well beyond their God-given ability.
Don’t you think that teaches a better life lesson than the IHSA alternative? Don’t you think one team’s shocking upset can inspire the masses more deeply and increase self-esteem more effectively than homogenized competition? If you don’t think so, just look at St. Patrick of last year. The team was barely .500 going into the playoffs and came a bad-call away from possibly winning a state championship. Coming into this season, a lot more teams had hope of competing at a higher level.
If St. Patrick could do it, why couldn’t they? I strongly believe that inspiration leads to hard work, and hard work leads to success. Maybe not immediate success, but success in life. And isn’t that what this is all about?