BY GARY MARSHALL
The new Sage Creek High School in Carlsbad is beautiful. The back-to-back baseball/softball diamonds and tennis courts are woven into a school complex that blends smoothly into the canyon hillside. It is a tribute to our community.
The facility that excited me the most was the new football stadium, with its sharply lined synthetic turf field, towering light standards and concrete stadium bleachers — all book ended by big yellow goal posts.
My reason for the excitement is that I played many high school sports — football, basketball and track — and then played college football at West Point. My son played high school football, then played football for an Ivy League college. We lived a part of the American dream. Football was tough emotionally and physically. Coupled with academics it was a real character builder.
Inspired about football in the neighborhood, I approached Sage Creek Principal Cesar Morales to see if I could help with the freshman football team. Big surprise — no football. The school offers 18 other sports, but, again, NO FOOTBALL!
Why is there a football stadium, but no football?
To date, the explanation is that Carlsbad’s school board was modeling the footprint of Canyon Crest/Torrey Pines high schools and San Dieguito/La Costa Canyon high schools. There, only one school in the district has football, supposedly creating a more “comfortable academic environment” at the non-football school.
Motivated to hopefully change the school board’s thinking, I sent “The Boys of Fall” video to Superintendent Suzette Lovely and each board member. The video demonstrates what dreams and experiences students forfeit by removing football. The superintendent and all board members are women, so my hope in having them view the video was to show how the emotion and spirit of football, like no other sport, can be transmitted to students, faculty and the community.
However, all subsequent conversations with school administrators came with the vibe that football is a potential negative and Sage Creek High School would be “a more comfortable experience” without it.
My point to them was that football is the most popular sport in the United States and is a foundational standard of the American high school experience. It teaches emotional and physical toughness, team play and responsibility.
Trying to protect students by creating an academic conclave is a mentality that weakens student experience.
In order to get an expert opinion, I contacted Ed Burke, the head coach I assisted for six years at Torrey Pines High School. Ed coached for 43 years and is in the California Coaches Association Hall of Fame. The football stadium at Torrey Pines High was renamed Ed Burke Stadium in his honor.
Coach Burke and I attended the Aug. 14 school board meeting. We were scheduled next to last of 40 discussion items and given five minutes. Ed eloquently explained that in 43 years he taught many subjects and coached nearly every sport. He said, “Football is by far the greatest school experience a young man can have.”
Our suggestion to the school board was to start gradually with a freshman/junior varsity team for fall 2014. Fielding a team would logically answer to the taxpaying community the question of why build a million-dollar football stadium. Lastly, each board member was given a sheet with 42 reasons a Sage Creek football program would provide a more complete and improved school experience. The board was asked if there was any discussion.
The answer from each board member was silence. No discussion. No committee to evaluate a future program.
These types of decisions, by a select few, are a microcosm of America, where comfort and protection trump individual responsibility, hard work, and endeavors that create stronger citizens.
Are these decisions moving America in the right direction?
The school board owes an explanation to the community as to who made the decision to have a football stadium and no football. The school board also owes an explanation on how it was vetted and why the community was so poorly informed.
The above appeared on the op-ed page in the Sept. 7, 2013, UT-San Diego. The author is a 1965 graduate with academic honors from Hoover High who has a long and distinguished background in athletics. Marshall was a starting quarterback on the football team and also started in basketball and lettered in track and field at Hoover. He is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., where one of Marshall’s coaches was Bill Parcells and his freshman basketball coach was Bobby Knight, both coaching legends. Marshall’s football roommate was Gary Steele, who became the first African-American letterman in football at Army. Steele is the father of ESPN anchor Sage Steele and Baltimore Ravens public relations executive Chad Steele.
The AD at Sage Creek sent me an e-mail response. Students must attend the high school where they play sports full time in order to be eligible. The AD is Andrea Williams.
So I would guess because the district has an open admissions policy students who wanted to play FB would choose to attend Carlsbad HS, rather than the school closest to home. Sad in my opinion. Football is a positive as far as I am concerned but not all administrators or parents who elect school boards necessarily see it that way.
I would imagine that serious football coaches from the football school would heavily recruit the eight graders in middle schools in the district and get the best potential athletes to choose Carlsbad with promises of football success. This is what the Catholic schools do that have such strong programs. That leaves out lots of late maturing athletes, those who want to play but cannot compete with a single loaded school, who might have contributed at their home school, and those who decide to go out for the sport after already committing to their neighborhood school. Too bad. But it seems the win loss success is more important than the educational value and friendships that can be made in the sport and the unity that it promotes in the fall for all students at the local high school. Football is one of the few sports left that doesn’t rely on athletes who participate year round in expensive travel club teams, such as baseball, volleyball, basketball, etc. Too bad for the district but they probably save money in paying for equipment, coaches, officials, game supervision, etc. Still, sad.
Carlsbad’s football program has been on the upswing. I don’t follow other sports than football, basketball, and trsack, with a little baseball thrown in. It seems to me that football may not be year-round but there is spring practice and tons of passing league games to occupy in the summer. Gary Marshall told me that he and Ed Burke made their presentation to four ladies, who I guess were the final; word and football was out at Sage Creek. The school has built a pretty nice cross-country and track program, I think.
This issue spreads to college football. The state of California once had more than double the number of college football programs. More than 20 have been cancelled due to a combination of budget issues, Title IX requirements, and NCAA rules requiring DI colleges to field expensive DI football programs that make football unaffordable in most of California’s colleges. This caused my school, UCSB to drop FB twice. If they and other CA colleges were allowed to play as non-scholarship football programs while the other sports remained D-I we would still have a lot of these football teams remaining and more CA high school students would have a place to play in college, and all that goes with having Fall football events when students return to campuses.
The reasons given for the value of football in the above article apply to college age students as well. I advocate a club football system, like the one back east, where students play football on college club teams, just as they do in rugby, lacrosse, ultimate, and crew. A varsity experience without NCAA requirements that make the sport outrageously expensive.
As far as small high schools fielding football teams. I’m all for it. What good does it do educationally, for a kid to be lumped among a huge pool of students from different schools trying out for a spot on a varsity squad? If each small school fielded a team more young athletes could enjoy the experience. I coached overseas next the the Panama Canal and we fielded four “varsity” football teams from a single relatively small high school. Those that wanted to play got a chance and treated it as seriously as if they were playing for a big time high school program. We even had one student eventually play pro. Participation should be encouraged not made more restrictive. Just my two cents as a former player, coach, and FB parent.
Very sound and reasonable, Jim. Keep up the fight.
Mark Rossi is precisely correct, of course, regarding the real reason why there will be no football at Sage Creek; same reason there is no football at San Dieguito HS, or Canyon Crest – so that La Costa Canyon HS and Torrey Pines HS can field strong football teams. It is simple math, would you rather draw your football team talent from a pool of 2000 students, or 4000 students? Imagine if the Oceanside District eliminated football at El Camino HS, or if San Marcos fielded a team only at Mission Hills, but not at San Marcos HS! Some would say the Escondido district went this route by tactic policy when they gutted Orange Glen’s program in order to boost Escondido and San Pasqual HS – albeit they didn’t even have the common decency to pull the plug entirely at old OG, they may as well have.
I’m told that for generations school administrators have set school district boundaries in a growing city that would ensure Bakersfield High’s ability to remain a premier athletic school. Your right, what if El Camino never came along? Oceanside could have become another Long Beach Poly. San Diego High gradually was decimated athletically by the arrival first of Lincoln, then Morse. At one time San Diego students came from as far East as Lemon Grove, and from as far North as Clairemont-Bay Park. My question is, will Sage Creek students be eligible to turn out for football at Carlsbad?
A well written and thought out article. However, its author is either ignoring or missing the obvious reason that there is no football at Sage Creek HS, that being the overwhelming opposition to diluting the pool of football talent that would otherwise be available to Carlsbad HS alone. I agree that football, not only playing it and all the benefits that entails, but enabling fellow students to attend games and root on their team on Friday nights, is an essential part of the high school educational experience. That experience doesn’t seem complete without it!
Will athletes from Sage Creek be eligible at Carlsbad for football?
I tried to see if Sage Creek students could play FB at Carlsbad. Couldn’t find anything online except that the school district has an open attendance program where middle school grads can select which school they want to attend. So probably if you want to play FB you would pick a school that has it. I e-mailed the Sage Creek AD to see what he says about it. The pics of the new stadium are awesome. Too bad they don’t have FB.
Jim