The Dodo Bird is our classic example of an extinct species. Now add the traditional three-sport high school athlete and the bench jockey. These well-defined categories in both boys and girls high school athletics are nearing extinction. Their death knell is not due to predation or climate change or a meteor slamming earth. They are on their way into the history book of school athletics due to specialization, elitism, and family self-interest. Today’s athletic bench is reserved for boys and girls who specialize in one sport, are driven to be elite athletes, and have access to personal training, camps, and significant travel expenses. Say it ain’t so, Joe, but it is.
Three-sport athletes were the backbone of athletic programs.
A three-sport athlete in the last century participated consecutively in fall, winter, and spring/summer sports. Historically, and before Title 9, a three-sport athlete was a male who played football, basketball, and baseball. Variants included cross country, wrestling, swimming, and track. Each sport had a concise season and schedule of practices and games. When one season ended another began and their game schedules never conflicted. The most talented athletes were awarded twelve athletic letters, and their letter jackets were miniature and portable trophy cases. Kids grew up seeing themselves on the high school teams and many made it happen.
Title 9 provided parallel opportunities for girls to be three-sport athletes. Their variants include volleyball, gymnastics, basketball, softball, track, and soccer. And today we add girls wrestling.
Three-sport athletes were the backbone of a high school’s athletic teams. Their athleticism and natural gifts allowed them to be starters at each of the school’s developmental level teams if not immediately on the varsity team. Three-sport varsity athletes carried the Big Man/Woman On Campus moniker for generations.
Most three-sport athletes were not stars. In fact, this high percentage were yeoman athletes and bench jockeys who played both for their love of the sport and a personal desire to be on their various teams. Team membership, even just sitting the bench, was a big deal.
Winning became all that mattered.
In the 1990s our high school’s athletic leadership constructed a competitive scenario answering the question, “what is the optimal combination of athletes for a championship team”. We considered three categories of athletes, boys and girls, and used basketball as our scenario sport. A gifted athlete had five skill sets. They were skilled ball handlers, shot with consistent accuracy, jumped high, had real foot speed, and were always aware of everyone on the court. A highly competitive athlete had three or four of the five skill sets. A good athlete had two or three of the five skill sets.
Given this scenario, if a basketball team had four gifted athletes and one highly competitive athlete, we believed a team was on track to a conference championship and WIAA play offs. If a team had three gifted and two highly competitive athletes, they were championship contenders. If a team had one gifted athlete, two highly competitive athletes, and two good athletes, they could make a good showing on game night.
The scenario was premised on averages and the natural abilities of athletes. This scenario worked for decades. Our school parlayed this scenario into state championships and multiple trips to the state tournament. It worked until making a good show and being contenders were not good enough for parents of athletes. The scenario, based on the skill sets athletes naturally brought to the team, worked until the obsession to win overrode the usual distribution of gifted, highly competitive, and good athletes.
The edge.
Gifted athletes are just that, naturally gifted. Coaching and training do not create total giftedness. However, for highly competitive athletes, foot speed, hand/eye coordination, and perceptiveness can be honed with coaching and training. Ball handling and shooting skills also can be improved with coaching. Specific skill sets can be improved. The obsession to improve the skill sets of highly competitive athletes became the death knell for three-sport and bench jockey athletes.
The championship scenario changed when multi-sport athletes committed to the edge of improving their skills in just one sport and and became year-round athletes in that sport only.
The championship scenario changed with commercial coaching and training. Lay coaches grow athletic skills sets, but professional or commercial coaching and training add a new and higher level of skill set development. A niche industry developed in specific sport training centers, clinics, and practice facilities.
The championship scenario changes when a one-sport athlete competes on a regional or national level not just within the local community or athletic conference. They are exposed to a higher level of competition amongst other highly competitive athletes who hold the same goal – personal improvement. Elite training and competition are gifted and talented education in sports.
These three changes create the edge. Each creates an advantage for a single or select group of athletes that grows their ungifted skill sets to an extremely highly competitive level. With these advantages schools that traditionally not been champion contenders became champions or competed annually for championship trophies.
The final key to creating a greater number of highly competitive athletes is parental commitment of time and money. Time and money are the engines that gives children access to professional training, camps, and clinics, to compete in regional and national events, and to sustain commitment over time. There is a very real “keeping up with the Joneses” when it comes to family time and financial commitment. “If my child is not getting superior coaching, clinics, and camps and is not traveling for competition, all the Jones children who do will have an advantage over my child.”
Achieving the edge advantage begets elitism and in the arena of high school sports elite athletes get play time and recognition and non-elite athletes do not. College coaches attend more camps and clinics and regional and national competitions than go to high school games because camps and clinics is where the elite athletes showcase themselves against other elite athletes.
The Dodo Birds are crowded off the bench.
Truly gifted athletes still can compete in multiple sports and be recognized. They are the top 1-2% of all school athletes. We see them annually ranked as Five Star Athletes on rosters of the nation’s high school athletes. University and college teams subsequently are ranked by the number of Five Star Athletes they sign. The non-gifted athlete who dreams of playing in college or professionally must commit to a single sport and with personal grit and family support grind through camps and clinics and regional showcasing.
The only remaining multiple sport athlete is the kid who just wants to play and to be on the team. But, for this kid, the bench is getting crowded. Most school teams work with a given number of players on the team roster. Post-season playoffs limit the roster, so rosters for the preceding season begin to reflect playoff rosters. Bench seats are institutionally limited.
Further, the more single-sport athletes on a team who are committed to the edge, the fewer spots on the bench for the multiple-sport athlete and perennial bench jockeys. It is a matter of numbers. School coaches know that using a cut policy creates student and parent problems, but they also know that keeping a child who will never play on the bench creates a deeper problem. Hence, bench seats are limited to competitive players and the higher percentage of competitive players are single-sport, edge players.
The athletic pyramid is getting steeper.
All athletes empty their athletic locker sooner or later. They know or are told that their competitive athletic time has come to an end. The statistical distribution of this “knowing” resembles a pyramid. A great number of kids drop out of sports at the natural break points of elementary to middle school and middle school to high school and high school to college. These are invisible departures; they just don’t show up for the next season.
Other athletes depart when the increased competition pinches them off from bench seats and playing time. It is an equation of time and resources versus perceived reward. The diminishing reward of play time and team membership no longer motivates a child to continue with the grind of competing with edge athletes. Regardless of what children are told about the intangible benefits of sports participation, they know their own realities in the changing world of elite athletes.
The edge advantages of single-sport athletes have made the dimensions of the pyramid grow very steep. Fewer children either have meaningful access to school teams or game play time. There are fewer multiple-sport athletes and fewer kids who are able to hang around the game sitting on the bench.
There are no roosting places on the steep pyramid for Dodo birds.
Change is inevitable; extinction is hard to bear.