I watched young David Walter (NCCo. Teen) win the Jeopardy Teen Tournament this evening, rooting for him all the way. He didn’t win last night’s game but came through, magnificently, tonight, to take $75,000 home with him.

While I was watching it was difficult not to reflect upon the news of earlier today where the Cape and Central game last night caused such a disgusting ruckus. Causing a pregnant woman to be taken to hospital and police called out from all over. Maybe worse is the result of the poll results on this home page. Why in the name of all that’s holy are so many calling for additional police to be on duty and a children’s sporting event?? For some reason I suppose I hoped the majority would choose the last option…”Get rid of all HS sporting events” but only 16% of the voters did. Meanwhile, a shocking 32% called for “allowing the fans to watch but bring in more cops”. Have we, as a society, gone mad?? How many times has some disturbance…or worse…been reported as happening in or around our schools and their events? How many times has violence been the end result of such disruptions followed by ensuing arguments “this…or that…didn’t happen”. Strikes me that with the increasing frequency of such reports it’s as the old adage says…no smoke without fire. And it makes little difference that the four who were arrested were obviously not HS students. (At least I hope they weren’t, given their ages…!)

I’d like to know what is hoped to be accomplished by increasing police presence at something as inconsequential as a kid’s sporting event. And wouldn’t it be much more effective to ban sports events, at least for a year? In the grand scheme of things, how important does anyone deem sports to be, anyway? Yes, it’s healthy…but not when spectators or pregnant women get hurt or leave in fear. It’s not educational. It may be seen as a means by which some kid gets scouted for better but what about that if he/she doesn’t have the academic ability to graduate college with a real education and purpose for life instead of, at a minimum, a few years of pseudo-fame as the best player on a team and, at best, go on to play pro-sports…few and far between.

A referendum has just been approved to bring a middle-school campus and a new elementary school to the Milford district at an increase to the tax-payer. No…it’s not huge increase but as a tax-payer I’m absolutely fed-up hearing we need new schools, bigger and better, more modern buildings in order for kids to get a better education. Since when has an edifice dictated the quality of education? We need improvement, yes…in the quality of our educators, better compensation for excellence in that area; for parents to stop making excuses for their ill-behaved children and/or suing school boards when they take a stance against an unruly child. Perhaps we are more in need of schools where the unruly and undisciplined may be sent so that children who want to learn may do so. Maybe then we would have more kids like David Walters, who can be admired and emulated by his peers for his academic ability rather than by how well he plays or how good he looks in on the field. Where the investment his family made in his upbringing and education will benefit him throughout his life and not only for a few bragging rights at the Friday night post-games.

Congratulations, David!! On a day when there is some disgust at a few of your generation for their behavior, you did make some of us very proud for the manner in which you conducted yourself throughout…even though you had not won.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 17th, 2007 at 1:43 pm and is filed under Education, Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.