Worst high school athletic program in the country?

We have a high school in our area that is bad at almost everything. This winter, the boys and girls basketball teams won a combined three games, and the wrestling team sent no one to state. Last fall, the football team won two games. Last summer, the baseball team won three games.

The one sport they're good at? Soccer.

 

And your boy Jesse Pellot-Rosa, who put in four pretty solid years on Broad Street, correct?

 

The one year I was responsible for covering Vina (Ala.) High, every player above the eighth grade quit the football team midway through the (winless) season after losing their only area game of the year ... despite the fact that because they were in a two-team area, they were guaranteed a playoff berth. The boys basketball team went winless until pulling off a miracle upset in the district tournament opener, and suffered the indignity of having to replace its burned-out possesion arrow with an empty paper Coke cup that the scorer moved from side to side as needed.

 

even more of a reason to blame soccer.

 

I'm hesitant to go to the IAHSAA and IHSGAU websites and pinpoint down the school in question that you are referring to, JB.

But seriously, I can name several schools in Iowa, in the large cities that are in the same predicament. My high school is still on that mendoza line, simply because the football team has won 2 games over the last 70. And they were a traditional powerhouse. The boys basketball team is the only game in town, but it's encouraging to see the girls' programs finally moving in the right directions, namely softball, volleyball, and basketball. The boys baseball team needs consistency and the track programs for both boys and girls need better athletes if they are going to compete. Or at least spend more time training.

Kids today are either unable to go out due to socio-economic realities (get a job to take care of family, family situations, etc.) or on the flip side, are not interested since there are so many other non-sports options for them.

 

The game I covered when the possession arrow went out, they used a spare bag of raisinettes (sp). Despite the sign on every door to the gym that said "No food in the gymnasium."

 

What Oz said. . . . Terrific column.

Worth reading even if you stumbled across this thread, just to see a writer grab a column idea and then report the hell out of it while writing it as a column.

The link again:
http://www.kansas.com/sports/lutz/story/414554.html

 

I actually see more really good and really bad prep teams in cities large enough to have significant numbers of teams. In my city, one (usually nationally ranked) baseball team would beat the other two public schools 20-0, no question. In basketball, one team has been dominant for the last 20 years. Football is more even.

Here's my pet theory: In the 1990s, it became very fashionable to treat property as a short-term investment. As a consequence, parents are more likely to move into the school zone of the school with the best program at what their kid(s) do. So all the baseball players go to one school. All the football players go to one school, etc.

It's always been that way, but I think it's more so now.

Taking it a step further, the atmosphere a school's administration sets up for athletics can have an impact on all sports. In a city near here, a very large, affluent public school is awful in just about all sports because the word is, the school supports the arts — at football games, the crowd used to leave after the 200-piece band is done at halftime — but not athletics. All the athletes in that part of town go to the neighborhood Catholic school, which is among the best in the state in the highest enrollment class in all major sports.

Basically, what I'm getting at is I'm not completely surprised. That kind of incompetence is more likely in a city than a one-school town.

 

One thing Lutz did: He went through that entire piece without using the phrase "worst high school athletic program in the country". He pointed out that they struggle, then explored reasons why.

The quote that drove home, for me at least, the impact of all that losing:

 

The first year I worked for a newspaper, I covered a small school that was horrible in all varsity sports. They were 1-8-1 in football (in their first year after disbanding the program for two years), something like 5-19 in both boys' and girls' basketball, and maybe 4-16 in baseball. (They didn't field a softball team at the time.)

Five years later, I covered their football team in the state finals.

I've also seen it at big schools, where you have a few dry years where there just aren't the athletes. Or a year where all the athletes are concentrated in one sport and the others suffer. I could see where a school hits the "reverse jackpot" and sucks across the board. It can happen.

 

Wichita athletics in general are all or nothing. There are no decent teams in Wichita's City League. You're either a contender or nothing. It's really amazing how there is no middle ground. Schools like Northwest, Heights and the two private schools (Bishop Carroll, Kapaun Mount Carmel) are good are pretty much everything. A few schools are good at some things, bad at others. Then there's West.

Oz is right about thing - if I moved to Wichita, the northwest area is where I'd look at, in the Maize district, maybe Goddard.