I apologize in advance for any emotion that may overtake my rational capacity for editorial couth here, but I am a bit peeved, and I am going to share with you my current state of disdain for mankind.
My wonderful editor of this fine weekly paper, Debra Lordan, passed on an article that she thought I might be interested in, which appeared in The Maui News (July 18 issue), entitled, “DOE Deficit May Kill Off JV Sports.”
It seems that the state Department of Education is facing a $9.2 million budget cut, and the brain trust in charge of this year’s budget has recommended cutting coaches’ salaries by $1 million, reducing funding for the A-Plus-After-School programs and extinguishing all junior varsity athletic programs that are not protected by Title IX.
Title IX gender-equity requirements receive special funding that protects sports such as girls’ softball and girls’ junior varsity volleyball, so those sports can’t be cut. But all other JV sports would be eliminated.
That’s right, JV sports on Maui has landed itself on the endangered species list. Tell me it isn’t so.
Tell me that our current, apathetic country—with gas prices approaching $5 a gallon, a Lame Duck president still silently making decisions to enhance his legacy, an oil war that is bilking billions of dollars and thousands of lives each and every day, a country-wide (no pun intended) mortgage crisis with foreclosures as common as flu shots, and a presidential race with less intrigue than a Paula Abdul meltdown—we are going to add to this pathetic list of current affairs the death of junior varsity sports?”
Why are we paying athletic coaches anyway? Why aren’t our teachers coaching our kids for free? Where do I sign up? I, TV Mott, am available to coach any sport you need, and I will not charge you a dime.
O‘ahu Interscholastic Association Executive Director Dwight Toyama claims to have discussed the proposed cuts with other league executives from the Big Island, Kaua‘i, and Maui.
“At least we’re keeping one level,” Toyama said. “We’re trying to keep sports offerings.”
Good job, Dwight. Way to go. Thanks for the effort.
What is happening to our country? Am I the only one who thinks it’s weird we can send information all over the world wirelessly within seconds, but we can’t build a battery to run our cars on electricity? Of course we can make the battery! It’s the oil industry that prevents it from happening. Now, we are going to let money get in the way of our kids’ sports programs, and we are going to idly sit by and let it happen?
The Maui Interscholastic League has 19 sports including diving, swimming, canoe paddling, track and field, golf, wrestling, judo, volleyball, water polo, competitive cheering, air riflery, bowling, soccer, tennis and cross country.
Junior varsity sports offers so many things to our kids beyond the actual game itself. They are a springboard to varsity-level athletics; and they are a tool for kids in the throes of puberty with which to learn responsibility, acceptance, sportsmanship and friendship. They afford impressionable minds safe, after-school opportunities that far outweigh the price we will all pay for the alternative. They are at least as important to the development of our youth as geometry.
How we could allow this to happen is beyond me. On Aug. 7, the budget will be finalized and the Department of Education will have made its decision on how to handle the $9.2 million shortfall. Hopefully, smarter minds will prevail and junior varsity sports will be removed from the endangered species list in Hawai‘i.