New activities rules are out of bounds

Submitted on August 22, 2002

Send to friend Some Missouri Catholic high school athletic teams will compete under new - and unjust - rules starting this fall. Many smaller Catholic schools will find themselves now playing public schools with much larger enrollments. This mismatch results from a far-from-unanimous recent decision by the Missouri High School Activities' Association to multiply the enrollments of Catholic and other non-public schools by 35 percent for determining in which class (from small 1A to large 5A) they should compete. Catholic school powerhouses such as CBC, St. Louis University High and DeSmet won't be affected since they're already in the highest state classification. They've shown their athletic - and academic - prowess and will continue to do so. But small schools such St. Vincent High School in Perryville or Cardinal Ritter Prep in North St. Louis will be hurt. They'll be bumped up into a higher category that certainly will put them at a disadvantage in seeking state championships - of which Cardinal Ritter's teams have won several in recent years. As Bruce Valleroy, St. Vincent's athletic director, told the Review for its Back to School supplement last week, "How can we compete...?" His school, with 184 students, is expected to be in the same classification with New Madrid, whose enrollment is 700. Davids occasionally defeat Goliaths on the football field and basketball court, but schools with enrollments that dwarf those of their competitors have a distinct advantage since they can draw from a much larger talent pool. The whole purpose of the original state classification was to match schools of about the same size, still the fairest way of settling the score. In opposing the rule change, representatives of schools not receiving state money, like those of the archdiocese, noted that such schools comprise only 12 percent of the educational institutions in the state yet in recent years have won 35 percent of the state's athletic trophies. Is the rule change driven by public school envy and some sort of "punishment" for the success Catholic and other non-public schools have shown? We hope not. An athletic association like that of the state should strive to offer equal opportunities and not tilt the playing field. Those backing the change have argued that Catholic schools can recruit students while public schools cannot and that public school enrollments fluctuate anyway because of the high number of dropouts some of them experience. As has been noted by those who see through such a weak argument, any problems in the state's public schools were not caused by private schools. Students can attend any public school they want if their parents pay the difference in tuition. More important, though, is the fact that Catholic schools don't "recruit," they "attract" good student athletes. Part of the allure of a Catholic school is the outstanding education it offers student athletes - and which its coaches require their charges to make their highest goal. For this academic year, Catholic and other non-public schools will probably have to live with the unjust new rules. We urge the state's high school activities association to rescind this rule and return to the classification system used before. Nothing's perfect, but something more just to the students is best.