I always like to kick off the month of April with an April Fool’s Day story about local high school sports. From what I’ve heard in my travels around town, this year’s joke about Strawberry Crest High School getting a horse racing team fooled many more people than last year’s story about a golden retriever becoming Durant track and field’s breakout star.
I knew I must have done something right when, in May, a reader called our office asking for my help in contacting Crest administrators to help with the team. I thought the disclaimer in that week’s paper would have prevented that from happening but, lo and behold, I found myself explaining none of the people she called the school looking for were real and I had come up with the idea in the shower the morning I wrote the story.
While I didn’t want to help convince the school that it really does need a horse racing team — there is no way that would ever happen, given the nature of the sport — the call did get me thinking several months later. Some schools in Florida offer sports that others, including ours, do not. Could they work if they were offered here?
The FHSAA does sanction several sports that aren’t offered at our schools. I’m looking at boys volleyball and girls weightlifting, specifically, and I see a couple of opportunities that could be taken advantage of.
Boys volleyball could become a popular spring sport, as the game is fun to play and can be practiced pretty much year-round in Florida. It’s often played at the college level (my alma mater, Florida Gulf Coast University, has a ton of sand courts, for example) and does have professional circuits and Olympic presence.
A good weightlifting program can be beneficial to athletes in many ways, from improving their health to improving their ability to perform in other sports (which is why many male weightlifters also play football, for example). I think it’s beneficial for kids to learn proper lifting forms as soon as possible because, even if you never compete in a weightlifting event after high school, using proper form is the most important step one can take to avoid injury when exercising. Penn State running back Saquon Barkley may be athletically gifted enough to power clean 405 pounds with bad form, but that doesn’t mean most people could get away with that with their muscles or ligaments intact.
Bowling may not be the most traditional sport but it is FHSAA-sanctioned. I know that a lot of kids like to bowl for fun anyway, like my high school friends and I used to do at the Eagle Ridge Mall, so I can see how it would attract some interest around a campus. Rolling a perfect game may be one of the most satisfying accomplishments one can have in a sport that, like golf, can be played by just about anyone for a long time.
I’m not sure if or when we’ll see these activities offered locally at the FHSAA-sanctioned high school level, but you won’t hear any complaints from this writer should that happen.