Public school not a place
for private club sports

A decision by the Freehold Regional High School District Board of Education to decline to start an interscholastic ice hockey program this fall made sense.

In recent months a group of parents and teens going by the name of School Kids Asserting Team Expansion (SKATE) made a bid to have the program started on the varsity level at the district’s six schools.

For the most part, the youngsters are players who already play hockey in private leagues.

While the supporters of ice hockey were correct in their assertion that public and private high schools in the Shore Conference have started ice hockey programs in the past few years, none of those situations is like the FRHSD, which is made up of six high schools.

The SKATE supporters were supporting a hybrid plan in which each school would have fielded its own team. SKATE members had offered to support the establishment of ice hockey programs at the district’s high schools through fund-raising efforts. The board would have paid for transportation of the teams.

SKATE got tripped up by a couple of factors.

Chief among them was the fact that the board’s budget for the 2002-03 school year was defeated in the April 16 school election. Instead of adding programs for the coming school year, the board will be delaying the start of some approved sports and cutting $1.5 million from its $126 million budget.

Another factor was SKATE’s proposal to support hockey through fund-raising efforts.

Board member Bonnie Rosenwald said she wanted to see more specific answers in terms of fund raising.

"I see nothing concrete. I don’t know where this money is coming from. I don’t see the sponsors. I don’t see any of that. We have to take it on faith that you’re going to do the fund-raising," she told the SKATE representatives. "The issue is that the money is not necessarily there and the statements I received don’t make it clear where the money is coming from."

We were troubled by a statement made by a SKATE representative who, in discussing the plans for the ice hockey program, told the board that student-athletes who do not play interscholastic hockey in high school will have their chances for college athletic scholarships jeopardized.

Does that mean that a student who wanted to try out for a team and play for fun would not be welcome? Does it mean that only experienced ice hockey players would be welcome to try out? Maybe that’s not what SKATE meant to say, but that’s the way it sounded.

That’s not the way sports have been run in the FRHSD for five decades.

Interscholastic high school athletics are not the personal domain of people who see nothing more than a college scholarship or a professional contract in front of them.

Public funds at high schools should fund teams that give everyone a chance to play and to learn a sport. The public’s money should not fund a sport that appears to be a private club for those who have already enjoyed the advantages of years spent learning a sport.