Effort a victory in itself (3/11/05)

The 2005 Indiana State Girls Basketball Tournament will go down in history as one of the best. All four games were well contested. All were actually games until the last minute. The 4A game dramatically came down to the last play. For a fan of the game and one who relishes the tradition of Indiana basketball, I was torn. I enjoyed four tremendously emotionally charged games for the players and their communities that followed them in mass. However, it is clear that the class system conceals what I have suspected since it was suggested many years ago — small class basketball does no one any favors.

The level of attendance is certainly down. However, I don’t fully buy that this is purely a symptom of multi-class basketball alone. For someone who has spent much of the past 15 years dialed into women’s basketball, I can tell you the attendance level at most levels of competition are off.

Smaller-name colleges struggle to attract a good student body crowd. The world is a smaller place, there are more things to do and many more kids now have jobs. Even at Jay County, which in my opinion has one of the most loyal followings in Indiana, you can see the difference in our student crowd. I don’t really buy into the argument that lower attendance is proof that class basketball is evil. Unfortunately, I think it goes much deeper than that.

As I look back to childhood in Jay County, one thing clearly stands out to me. My perception is that we, as a community, strove for excellence in most everything we did. This was especially true in our school system. With our band, our cheerleaders, our athletic teams, every extra-curricular activity, it seemed.

This was also true for our school facilities, our teachers — it seemed like anything was possible. I thought no one was more fortunate than us. There was a cultural expectation of excellence. Personally, I can especially relate this to the basketball floor. More nights than not, we were considered the underdog. We were facing an opponent that seemed almost invincible, on paper, when you looked our personnel. However, we never believed we couldn’t win. If the school was twice as big with a huge gym full of fans, it didn’t matter. No one had the advantage on us and we, as a community, enjoyed being the underdog. (Remember beating No. 1-ranked Anderson Highland or Richmond?) This may all be the memory of an idealistic small town kid. But maybe that’s the point.

Today, we have excuses about why we fail. Someone else has an unfair advantage. If we analyze the facts, we can all understand why it is impossible that we can succeed without some kind of a handicapping system. If you would look at the mission statements of many school systems you would find some kind of language that translates to “Thou shall make all attempts to make Jr. feel good about himself regardless of how many unfair attempts by an evil, authoritative system are undertaken to challenge him in order for him to be educated.” We have a communal desire to make everyone feel special; to make sure everyone has a medal to wear.

Everyone should aspire to greatness. We should empower all of our children to dream and provide them with the skills and opportunities necessary to fulfill their dreams. Unfortunately, not all of us are going to wear the gold medal this year. Through class basketball, and the like, we are robbing our children of precious experience by limiting their ability to fail. The real lesson we should teach our children is that life’s success comes from aspiring to win the prize. On occasion, we all fall short in life’s game. The real test is that, upon failure, we are able to look inward for the solution, not identify the obvious unfair advantage our opponent had over us.

We all must compete for life’s prize. When our children enter “the real world” they will not have the opportunity to compete for the position of CEO of General Motors (Class 2A). Can we all expect to rise to the top in our field, to be the best parents that ever lived or to single-handedly change the world? Of course not. However, it would certainly be beneficial to be raised in an environment that fostered the idea that it was possible. Not by making it easier to reach those goals but by reinforcing that life is full of obstacles that we must overcome and that we will often fail. To succeed, you must be able to work through those defeats and rely on the skills we were taught in childhood. Those skills should serve to guide us through the dark days knowing that success is the direct product of what you do yourself, no matter what the odds against you. Unfortunately, that is not the message we are sending our youth. That’s the real problem with class basketball.

Bryan Alexander

Portland

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