To have a winning record, an athlete or team needs to work out in the best facilities one would think, right? No that is not true. There are plenty of teams and athletes with winning records that have very dismal practice facilities or little to no facilities at all. You might ask, how could that be? The answer is simple. It could be a number of reasons but the top two are, funding or an administration that doesn't care. This past football season, I saw first hand how a team went 9-1 during the regular season without the steady use of a weight room. How did they do it? One word, SPEED! The majority of the offensive and defensive linemen looked like wide receivers. It amazed me how they overcame the odds to win every game with the exception of one during the regular season.
This was not the first time I have seen this happen. I was a member of a dominant track team in high school. The boys won the region title four years in a row and the girls won three years straight. People were amazed at how this small school could beat out major powerhouses with no track of their own. Yes, I said it, no track. We did not have a track of our own, so we had to travel everyday after school to the neighboring town to use our nemesis' track facilities. The powerhouses were shocked to find out that we didn't have a track of our own, yet we were able to upset schools known for having the best track teams in the area.
Even though the football team that went 9-1 and the track team that I was a member of didn't have the true facilities they needed to better themselves, they both showed what they were capable of and fought for the top spot. So my question is this, what needs to be done to make sure athletes have the practice facilities they need to better themselves, when there is no funding or their administrators could care less about the athletic program? Tell me, what do you think?
Yes, we do have limited facilities due to the inept spending by our school board and upper administration. It is a known fact in our school system (Mitchell County High School), that the superintendent and high school principal could care less about athletics. It is a crying shame that they don't worry about all of our students. It would be totally amazing at what our athletic teams could achieve if they were given the proper equipment and training facilities in which to practice. But apparently our sorry excuse for a school board won't do what is right for our children. Instead they want to spend money where it is not needed (such as a building in the northern part of the county) and tearing down and rebuilding existing walls that have no bearing on the safety of our school buildings.
ReplyDeleteWell, at this point I really don't know what to say about our school board. I am really upset that the money that was supposedly allocated for our physical education complex is now gone, but what is done is done. All I know to do now is to continue the fight for what our athletes deserve, but it will have to be on a different level. Apparently, if we want our athletes to have decent accomodations as far as training facilities, it will be up to we parents, friends, relatives, alumni, and concerned citizens to get these facilities for our kids. If anyone out there knows players in pro sports that would be willing to give us guidance, input, ways to find resources, please have them contact me, Susan Jamerson at 229-319-1225. I will not give up, no matter how hard this task is or how long it takes. If God sees fit for us to have a complex, then it will be so.
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