Have we lost our way in school sport

Have we lost our way in school sport, to a large extent I believe we have. Why? I will attempt to illustrate why.

I have for many years heard this phrase, high performance, it worried me then and it still does. How can we slot a 14-year-old into a high-performance programme when the maturation and growth process is nowhere near complete. How can we discount any school sports player, boy or girl based on the claim of experience in sport education — not good enough. Many a talent has emerged from obscurity. I am not saying that talent not be recognised, I am fully aware that the way of life is that we have an A team and a B team etc but at school level is that our main objective? I don’t think it is the main objective.

One of the main concerns around the loss of values in school sport is something I talk a lot about on my exclusive radio show, SCHOOL SPORTZ BUZZ which airs on www.chaifm.com on Tuesday’s between 6pm-7pm. We lost physical education in schools a while ago to some ridiculous decision-making and with this we lost one of the major platforms for participation — where a group of children are equal and where the physical education teacher can offer everyone the same exercises, no exclusion or separation.

Sport has become an absolute tool of marketing the school’s position in the education space. Yes matric results are important, I still have not seen 10 000 people watching a matric exam. A prominent banking group in SA in 2003 took on the objective of adding some real marketability to rugby derbies across South Africa — this had major positives but equal negatives. It meant we had to select the very best of players at all costs; it meant if the school didn’t have “that” player then it became a need to “shop” for the player from another school. Not healthy at school level in my opinion.

Schools are there for education and sport is part of that process. I do believe that we have amazing schools in this country with some incredibly dedicated staff and coaches. But the desire of a school to be a “business” has meant that school sport has lost its way. I believe that we look to develop sport with tinted glasses, I do not believe that the general rule right now is to pick the best and focus on them leaving the rest to make up the numbers — this is not what school sport should be.

I do also believe that we lack a national plan. For years now I have waxed lyrical about the need for this as well as the need for a sports practitioners’ council, similar to that of most professional bodies. Coaching and educating children is far more important than a chartered accountant’s conduct I can assure you. These are young minds that are impressionable and it is essential that we offer them the fundamentally correct coaching in sport — all sport. I include girls sport in the marginalised, very few co-ed schools really go out of their way to promote girls cricket, soccer, or rugby. We have national ladies teams in all three codes by the way — girls at school must play hockey, netball and tennis. What nonsense.

A national plan and monitoring body would prioritise these strategies and ensure a national equilibrium is attained. But as a start though we have to look at all avenues of school sport, festivals and weeks and ensure that the educational ethos is the focus, that players are made very aware that participation is the absolute — not the winning. I can almost guarantee you that the current issues around doping in school sport, which has come about 10 years too late, would not be an issue if we all did the job we should be doing. Children turn to external stimulants to meet their peers’ expectations, to meet their parents’ expectations and to meet their coaches’ expectations. This triangle of character shaping is vital to what becomes of our children.

We don’t need conferences on performance, on training methods or coaching techniques BUT we need them to get us back on the right path to coaching these young minds and to make sure that every child in a school gets the same coaching at all times, the excellence will take care of itself. I for one remain very keen to play a role in this and I am very clear in my mind that this is a massive project, but more importantly it will take more than me to get this right. You in?