By Jason Pike
ST. JOHN’S, NL – When social media quickly became flooded with angry and worried posts from students’ , coaches and parents of the enforcement of a mandatory teacher sponsors for practices, tournaments and games for all school sports, my mind quickly reverted back to 2021 when our kids were devastated by covid-19 restrictions and just about everything sport related was cancelled.
As a parent myself, I can very much attest to the fact that our kids were changed forever, and have never completely bounced back from the effects of the isolation of covid-19. The removal of socialization and isolation has forever affected the way we all interact with one another and, it was a complete reset in just about everything sports related. A lot of organizations, leagues and tournaments never did bounce back and that can be attested to when you enter any number of school gymnasiums and see the championship banners hanging on the wall of leagues & tournaments that abruptly stopped in 2021 and have never since returned.
So, when this announcement came down, I first saw it posted by the PC Party opposition which right off the bat gave me an uneasy feeling about what the real motives behind this announcement. Was it a political move? An attempt to get a dig in at the Liberal Leadership or was it something else? Whatever the case, it was hands down fear mongering which snowballed quickly and yes, within 24 hrs NL schools had released a statement assuring us that things would move forward as they have in past years.
Now, this rule of having to have a teacher sponsor at all games, practices and tournaments has existed for years, but in current times, Coaches have to be fully vetted by the police with a national criminal record check and a vulnerable sector check, so coaches cannot be any more securely vetted then that can they?
The sad reality of life is no matter what you do there will always be bad people out there with malicious intent and no amount of screening will always find them, so a teacher sponsor really serves no purpose. Look at it this way, the most recent horrific incident with Marcus Hicks and his sick and twisted actions went unnoticed for years and he was vetted and a school teacher, furthermore proving that the people who do these things can exist anywhere and yes it’s terrible and it’s devastating, but you cannot justly make every other athlete suffer for it, because in the long run if these kids aren’t playing sports they are going to find other ways to occupy themselves and that will likely either be with technology or trouble and neither seems like a truly favourable path.
The sad thing about this whole situation is even though NL schools say that things will proceed as normal, they likely will not and the reason being is that this announcement made everybody so nervous that they are not wanting to take any chances of repercussions or drama because at the end of the day these people are all volunteers and they do not need the headache. I spoke to a number of coaches who are running into opposition from schools even though the school board has said in the media it’s okay to run things as we have in the past. So, in reality words mean nothing, they’re still going to be fall out and our kids are the ones unfortunately who will pay the price. These sports, these teams are where the memories and relationships that last a lifetime are fostered. Most kids can’t afford to Club sports so the only teams they can avail of is with there friends and classmates at school and to risk upsetting that holds far greater long term consequences then people may realize.
Photo by David Hiscock / Action Snaps.ca
