Let the debate begin: private vs. public

There's no hiding the truth about a sore subject that provokes lots of debate: public vs. private. And the fact that 15 of the 20 high school teams headed to Bakersfield this weekend for the state basketball championships are from private schools adds fuel to the fire.

"It is a disturbing trend," said Dave Vierra, boys' basketball coach at Oakland Bishop O'Dowd. "Anybody who cares long term about high school sports wants equity. The solutions for the concerns are harder to find."

Marie Ishida, executive director of the CIF, said, "As long as we continue to divide up our championships by enrollment based, we'll probably have the issue come up continually in the future."

That's because private schools are dominant in the lower divisions with small enrollments. But if public schools can't compete, that's a problem.

"As an organization, we've looked at this issue several times during my tenure, and we haven't come up with a workable alternative," Ishida said.

Somebody had better get smart and come up with some good ideas, because one day, it just might be a state championship with only private schools represented.

-- Eric Sondheimer

Comments

[Hey Zeus]

yeah - the first poster is saying that private schools just have better athletes? so, rich people are better athletes than poor folk? Interesting....

[JJ]

LOL @ poster saying that the private schools have better athletes. Now THAT is funny.

By chance he wouldn't happen to be referring to the athletes they the private schools poach, transfer and/or recruit from the public schools,... espcially the inner city public schools, would he ?

[Roger]

Better programs, yes. Better athletes, no chance. I've coached at both types of schools, and the differences I see are in commitment to excellence, solid instruction and competition at the freshman and junior varsity levels, and an administration that supports coaches. The public schools have no freshman level, (or limited) place little emphasis on JV, don't allow teams to practice on teacher in service days, discourage weekend games and generally want to field teams in name only. Fundraising is another area where the privates are way ahead. But public schools have opportunities that are not consistently taken advantage of because of rules designed to level the playing field within a system. This is why you see a few, (and mostly the same) public schools able to compete at the highest levels in a specific sport; Westchester and Fairfax in basketball, Chatsworth in baseball are just a few examples.

Until public schools get creative, and allow individual programs to run themselves, we'll continue to have this debate.

[Greg]

Perhaps it could be that there are many more private schools in a division than public schools. Maybe such an analysis would prove that the numbers are right in many of the divisions.

[commenter]

I don't think that has anything to do with it private schools just might have better athletes or athletic programs