William R. Sprouse(美)

　　Sports, education & young people in America

　　For many young people in my part of the world (suburban America), the first brush with organized athletics comes on a Saturday morning in early spring. The weather is getting warmer and the school year's end is imminent, and moms, sensing the approach of summer vacation and Too Much Free Time, pile us into the backs of minivans and drive us to our town's local sports and recreation center. In my hometown, Egg Harbor Township, New Jersey, kids converge each year on the EHT Youth Organization Building, a cinderblock shack in the middle of a handful of baseball and football fields. There lines are waited in, forms filled out, birth certificates examined and photocopied, health insurance waivers furnished and signed. At the end of the morning, kids are signed up for little-league baseball and an instant summer schedule of activities has been created. Then it's time to go to Burger King.

　　For parents seeking productive ways to occupy their children's time, summer sports leagues offer a convenient and time-tested outlet for overabundant energy. In my case that meant baseball. America's pastime: nine weeks of pitched fastballs and sore elbows, grounders up the middle, digging it out to first base, shagging flies in the outfield and swatting mosquitoes in the infield. Then, after six innings, back to Burger King.

　　A couple of weeks after the signups at the cinderblock shack, we kids would be rounded up into teams and coached in the fundamentals of pitching, catching, hitting, and running bases. We'd be supplied with color-coded jerseys and mesh baseball caps, and then we would play a season's worth of games against one another. Playoffs would be held and champions crowned. At the end of the season an all-star team of the league's best players would be assembled to play against the best teams from neighboring towns.

　　Back and forth across the country this system repeats itself from town to town and sport to sport with little variation. Some leagues have storied pasts: baseball's Little League or football's Pop Warner League. Some are newer. In cities it is often the Policemen's Benevolent Association or the YMCA that assumes the sponsorship role. Always, though, there is the underlying idea that organized sport is a valuable and productive use of a young person's time. Sports, in short, are a kind of education, teaching important life skills that can't be learned in school.

　　Ideas about the educational value of sports vary widely. For some, sports foster the social development of young people, teaching kids how to interact with their peers outside the classroom. Sports teach kids what it means to compete - how to cope with losing, how to respond gracefully to success. Sports are about teamwork, how to work together toward a common goal. Sometimes they're about developing a sense of self-esteem. Sometimes they're simply about finding a healthy way to tire hyperactive kids out so they'll sit still in class or get to bed at a reasonable hour. Some bolder advocates claim that their games build character.

　　Given the prevailing educational undercurrent, it's no surprise that many kids' second brush with organized athletics takes place in a school. Junior highs and high schools sponsor their own sports programs and field teams of football, basketball, soccer and tennis players. There the educational theme is given a more direct and tangible form as squads of student-athletes travel around the state representing their schools on the field, court or diamond. Yet here, strangely enough, is where a bit of the educational component begins to alter. High school teams are necessarily more selective than their youth league predecessors. Tryouts are held, and less promising players are cut. Coaches receive salaries, and there is an expectation that the teams they shape will win. In sum, there is a slight change in emphasis away from education and toward outright competition.

　　Little-league sports, by contrast, are fundamentally egalitarian institutions, inclusive, unselective and welcoming (at least in theory) of different levels of ability. An important question in US life: how to balance this wish to be inclusive with the need to maintain authentic competition and play to win? This is indeed an important question in all walks of life and in any country.

　　I proved a mediocre baseball player in high school but an above-average (American) football player, and as time passed I devoted more and more energy to that endeavor. Why? So I could get a scholarship to college and continue my education, of course. But more on that in part II.

　　Living in China, I find that one of the things I miss most is watching my high school and college teams play other schools' teams each Saturday afternoon. That and Burger King.