As all non-subterranean Foothillians know, sports at Foothill were recently approved, or phased-in, but only in part, or in some way promised to be created at a future date.
I’d ask all those who this affects to suspend our relative “Yay, sports!” and “Boo, sports!” reactions to this and just focus on the simple fact that this will not logistically work to anybody’s satisfaction.
Foothill Technology High School has none of the infrastructure, none of the funding, and limited means of obtaining either to carry this speculative plan through to anyone’s satisfaction, especially as soon as it is planned to be carried out.
As a “competitor” and “athlete” (I was pretty bad) for Buena High School in the past, I had often noticed the simple, unignorable, spaciophsyical differences keeping Foothill from having functioning sports teams. {sidebar id=65}
Our campus is very small, and our administration has no clear solution to provide necessary faculties.
This is not something that can be pushed down the road or taken on as a challenge. This must be the first issue resolved, and hopefully before plans to establish teams are even considered.
Baseball, basketball, soccer, track and field, and football teams, among many other less profitable, less played, and thus less significant sports (in the eyes of all those managing this decision) are only made possible with access to fields on a regular basis.
Seeing as the anger of track, football, and baseball coaches at Buena and Ventura helped make the approval of our sports program possible, their concerns won’t be resolved.
What I am quite surprised with is the complete lack of appreciation among those involved for the simple fact that we have zero space and zero resources for the establishment, functionality, and maintenance of any sports teams except Quidditch.
What sports will be offered and which sports will not be? From the sparse details available, it would appear as though every sport except football will gradually be established.
How will we operate a track team seeing as we lack the eponymous track and any access to one? What about baseball? Will students interested in both football and Foothill be forced to sacrifice one for the other?
These basic questions are unanswered, and should have been first in the minds of those responsible.
If I really am the cynic everyone tells me I am, which is most likely, everything will go much better than I predict it will and things will get off the ground with more clearly established goals. But then what?
Our sports teams will do very poorly and have virtually no ability to improve, and this is accepting that maybe, just maybe, we find coaches, athletes, transportation, equipment, and everything else necessary for the functionality of a team.
Foothill Technology High School was not established to focus on sports. Unless we buy surrounding land and homes to expand, accept more students, and somehow find access to all necessary and proper fields, this will be an impossible task that will end poorly for all involved.
Furthermore, let’s not forget that being a technology school is literally in our name.
Athletics can be fantastic, but only if treated as a mainstay in the school’s priorities.
A school attempting to focus on technology and college-preparation should first work on operational mouses in our pods, all necessary instilling of spreadsheet prowess, and perhaps the establishment of the same number of AP courses offered at the very boundary schools we feel we are academically superior to.
Foothill, in fact, is losing AP courses, not gaining them.
We have (bias alert) a fantastic Speech and Debate program that, as President, I can safely say is vastly under-recognized and provides much more in way of college preparedness than our potential sports program is capable of providing.
Our administration should stop attempting to cater to needs that are being met in the hopes that sports could ever be something we do as well as winning robotics awards, scoring high API rankings, accumulating speech and debate trophies, and most likely much more I’m forgetting.
Sports at Foothill won’t work, and even if it feebly does, it will be at the expense of what Foothill used to recognize was what it did best.
