Kingston High sports take shape

Published 5:00 am Wednesday, December 20, 2006

It seems the North Kitsap School District’s Athletics and Activities Committee has run the mental gamut of sports possibilities for the North Kitsap School District in 2007-2008.

What started with the charge of creating more opportunities for kids to participate has yielded a recommendation that features 13 additional interscholastic sports teams and eight middle school intramural possibilities.

Consistently throughout the year-long process, NKSD administrators and AAC members have fallen back on the goal of doing what’s best for kids. But in the end, “what’s best for (all) kids” has unfortunately left some students of the here and now in a lurch.

Pending school board approval of the AAC recommendation — which should be decided Jan. 11, 2007 — North Kitsap sports teams will be split beginning next school year. For some that could mean being disenfranchised from a squad which one has belonged to since grade school, for others it may mean competing in a new, lonely environment, but looking at the big picture, it should at least give all students an opportunity to compete.

In some sports, however, that opportunity may not be the same as it would’ve been if the teams had stayed combined in the first year, but any exceptions will be left to the discretion of the school board.

Regardless, support is in place.

Though the word of teenagers must often be taken with a grain of salt, NKSD student survey data gathered this year showed a significant increase of interest in most sports inline with the opening of Kingston High School. Whether or not the 219 students at the 2A-sized Kingston and 384 students at 4A-North Kitsap who expressed interest in athletics actually compete, the opportunity should be available to them.

However, as with all too many things in life, it may come at a high price.

Participation fees of $90 at the high schools and $50 at the middle schools are being recommended by AAC budget expectations. But the NKSD board won’t know if that drastic of a hike is needed until it finds out what kind of measures the state Legislature takes in funding education during its upcoming session.

Likely it will inevitably cost kids more than a few pennies to participate, and for some, that fee, in itself, will eliminate opportunity.

The district has a scholarship program in place that provides for those in need, but perhaps school board director Dan Delaney and the state of Maine are onto something when they suggest making sports part of the curriculum, thus alleviating the need to fund them outside the lines of basic education.

One could only imagine the fall out of math teachers lining up against football coaches, battling out whose time is more important with students.

Those and many other bridges are yet to be crossed.

And though the school board also has yet to embark on the slippery slopes of what to do with Viking Stadium once the Buccaneers take the field there or what to call North Kitsap High School when it no longer encompasses all of North Kitsap, it will decide what sports are called for at each school Jan. 11.