Trade-offs

Early last December, our parish got a call from help from the social worker in a nearby community.  There was, she told us, a fairly large (for our rural area) number of kids who would basically be receiving nothing, or at least nothing much, for Christmas.  Their parents were broke, the safety net was tattered, and at any rate, safety nets don't provide things like Christmas presents.

The parish, of course, responded, because we're pretty good about that sort of thing.  The word went out one Sunday, and the next we had the ingathering of gifts, which appear in the photo.  There was nothing very grand there -- a good part of the collection was clothes (which I thought the safety net was supposed to take care of?), and the soccer ball for a nine year old boy that I was tasked with rounding up was one of the more frivolous gifts requested.

The point here is not to pat ourselves on the back for doing this.  I like to think that any church if called on would do as much or more.  The point, really, came up for me the following month  in a conversation with the president of the local youth soccer league.

The club, it seemed, had received a couple of requests for scholarships from parents of kids who wanted to play and who couldn't come up with the $100 fee.  This club is a very small, very hand to mouth operation, almost entirely volunteer operation, and that $100 fee goes largely for insurance, and what's left over goes to pay a trainer (that's what you call a soccer coach in the UK) who works with the kids, improves their skills, tactics, game sense, and espirit de corps.  For this, the kid gets to practice about 15 or 20 times, gets to play around 10 games all over the western end of the state, and (hopefully) gets some help learning about teamwork, sportsmanship, hard work, fair play, and soccer skills.  Furthermore, once you're on a soccer pitch it doesn't make any difference whether your mom drives a brand new Mercedes or a beat-up Chevy that's older than you are.

That's quite a bit for $100. 

Thinking more about it, I remembered some kids who were new in our parish around the same time I was new.  Although I didn't know it at the time (I found out a couple of years later), they had benefited from scholarships in the same soccer club, and two of them as a result had gotten scholarships at boarding schools.  I had been at the time a little dubious/anxious about their home life, and I think that getting them into boarding school may possibly have been life-changing for both of them.

Although a contribution for soccer scholarships wasn't budgeted, we were able to scrape up on short notice enough to fund one kid with some left over for another, or to pay for a uniform.  The club president -- who, by the way, had let me know previously that she was pretty skeptical about organized religion in all forms -- was very appreciative. 

Then I thought about the Christmas presents we had collected in December and wondered just how life-changing any of them had the possibility of  being. Although it's a lot more fun for the parishioners to go Christmas shopping for kids than to write checks for something as intangible as a soccer scholarship, I concluded that, all else being equal, the possible benefits of the soccer scholarships were greater than the Christmas presents. 

And you know that the safety net doesn't even pretend to cover soccer scholarships.

Why what Trinity Wall Street is doing is important

Since I started this blog a few years ago a number of people (not a big number, but big enough to think about) have made comments like this to me: (this is a composite of several questions)

"We would love to have sports in our church, but we're tucked into the middle of a city block, and the only open area around us is the alley where the super takes the trash out. We do have a church hall, but it isn't very big, and somebody put a huge crystal chandelier right in the middle of the room about 15 years ago, and we don't dare move it, and even if we did, all the windows are Tiffany glass, so we can't play inside either. Furthermore, the whole congregation is 70+ years old."

When I mention Trinity Wall Street, I'm referring, of course, to their recent announcement that they will be sponsoring two Little League teams, and encourage their congregation to attend games and cheer the kids on.

And, while the average age of their congregation isn't 70+, they are surrounded by skyscrapers and there's no place to play outside, except for the (historic) graveyard. In other words, they can't really play outside.

What they do have is sufficient money to sponsor two Little League teams (who will be playing on athletic fields built as part of the deal when real estate developers put up some housing on Hudson River landfill.

Let's assume that your parish can't underwrite two Little League teams. But what you can do is donate enough to a local soccer or baseball or basketball or other youth sports organization for one needy kid to play for one season. In our area, to do this for a needy travel soccer kid, it's about $100. In more affluent areas, it's probably twice or three times that. Ask the volunteers who run the leagues or the teams. You may find you get a really warm welcome.

When families ask about college sports....

Fact is, if you are involved in youth sports at all -- whether in a school, club or church environment -- the subject of college (and college sports) is almost guaranteed to come up at least once per season.

In an earlier post, we provided some cautionary information about the possibilities of Division I college athletic scholarships, and the burdens they impose on their fortunate (?) holders.

However, for kids with only moderate talent, there's an echelon of college sports that falls between intramural and intercollegiate that you should know about -- and that's club sports.

Thanks to the New York Times for bringing us this update! It's good background information even if the question of college sports never comes up in your organization.

Preparing for What?

Occasionally, even in our really small (comparatively) church summer soccer program we find ourselves in conversations with moms and dads whose children are with us for only one reason: to get mileage, in hopes they will eventually get an athletic scholarship.

The New York Times has been running an important series about athletic scholarships, and the lives they impose on their holders, particularly in Division I NCAA colleges. It's emphatically worth reading, especially if you find yourself occasionally (or frequently) in contact with parents (or kids) with athletic scholarship aspirations.

Two things the series make clear: (1) unless you're in one of the marquee sports, like basketball or football, full scholarships are very, very uncommon. Thus, there will also be major expenses associated with college. (Some people seem unaware of this, sadly). (2) an athletic scholarship is a job, and a very demanding one.

Questions that remain (at least so far) in my mind:

(1) given that division III NCAA colleges cannot give athletic scholarships as such but that there may still be a connection between a scholarship and athletic (or musical or artistic or whatever) prowess, how do expectations at division III schools compare with the bleak picture the articles paint of scholarship athletes' lives at division I schools? (As a lacrosse player many years ago at a division III school who did not have a scholarship, I suspect this question needs to be asked today as the experience of 45 years ago probably isn't representative of today's world.)

(2) what about private secondary schools that provide pretty much undisguised athletic scholarships? (In this case, I have a special concern about kids who may find themselves playing hurt just so they can continue their education even when they may only be in 9th grade or thereabouts.)

Glad to have thoughs or input on either of these questions.

What has this got to do with church? If you are involved with church and kids and sports, you'll get into this topic sooner or later. Might as well be informed on it in advance.