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High school sports go Jim Crow
By: Lafe Tolliver
The Toledo Journal
Originally posted 7/20/2010
Well, it looks like Toledo will be returning to the inglorious years of the early ‘30s, ‘40s and ‘50s when it engages in the separate but unequal splitting up of the city’s sports leagues.
One will be the city league populated by kids who do not have the bucks to afford the address to live outside of the confines of the city districts and which thus relegates them to the city high schools for their athletic endeavors.
The other to-be-formed sports league will be the cream of the crop composed of the well endowed Catholic schools and a few hangers-on who do not want to be associated with the citizens of Scott and Libbey and other ''down in the heel'' high school athletic programs.
This incredulous division of city team sports into the camps of the have’s and have not’s is reminiscent of the years of Jim Crow segregation whereby the black and poor schools were grouped together and the tony and monied high schools (a.k.a.: white schools) danced with partners of their own choosing.
When you speed dial that same scenario to present date, it is not now necessarily separate and equal but rather based on the theory that when in doubt ... follow the money trail, it is now deemed: separate and unequal.
What will transpire is the scenario by which you will have a well funded league that will have all of the fits and finishes to compete and compete well versus city high schools that are facing draconian cuts in their operating budgets, including some sports being entirely eliminated.
Now if you are a gifted athlete in one of the eliminated sports, you will have to die or adapt to another sport by which you can hone your skills and hopefully attract college recruiters.
If you are in the yet to be named new league and are a talented athlete, you simply thank your lucky stars that your parents have the bucks to send you to a Catholic high school and/or your parents have the ''contacts'' or ''connections'' to get you in their doors.
If you are stranded at an impoverished city high school that can barely afford chalk and paper towels, your only hope is to transfer out ASAP or be recruited by a Catholic high school due to your athletic prowess.
If you cannot get out of the sinking ship known as Toledo public high schools, you are relegated to a second tier of athletic mediocrity and with the hopes that your coach can persuade top-tier college recruiters to still give you a once over about attending a top NCCA college.
Yes, my friend, it is all about the money. Money to fund student athletics. Money to fund scholarships. Money to retain and develop top coaches and staff. Money to spread around so that your school’s name is in front of the people that count and who make the decisions as to whether or not you attend a level 1 college or you attend a Division II school or community college.
Make no mistake about it and do not be under any illusions. When you talk about the billions of revenue dollars that are generated by college sports, including the ads and clothing and attendant goodies that sell sports memorabilia to a sports-addicted nation, it matters where you attend high school and the name of your high school.
Hopefully, this pending division of the local high schools will be a wake-up call for parents to increase their diligence regarding making sure their kids focus on academics as their ''way out'' of poverty and not placing their sole hopes that Ohio State or Michigan or Penn State will be wooing your son or daughter to attend their vaunted school.
It is too bad that there is not in Toledo a person or persons who have the clout to keep the high school athletic system from becoming unglued with this pending division of rich and poor and black and white. But, to date I have not seen anyone from corporate Toledo or the religious community or government come out and make the case for unity and not disunity.
I have not heard the local Catholic Bishop Blair issue any ''decree'' stating that such divisions are not productive but rather they cause more social upheaval than good.
I have said it before and will reiterate it here again: Toledo is sliding backwards, not forwards, in this intentional re-segregation of the schools which, on its own momentum, will ossify the racial hardening of this city.
In an ideal work, the rich schools would share with their poorer brethren based on the novel concept that we are all in this together and the success of the city schools, academically and athletically, helps everyone and the image of Toledo.
But I speak as a radical and if I am not careful, someone from a local Tea Party will accuse me of being a socialist for such ''communal'' ideas and put me on a local billboard between pictures of Lenin and Hitler.
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Lafe Tolliver is a Toledo attorney. Send comments to: Tolliver@Juno.com.
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