High school athletics on bad course

The world of high school athletics changed way before we ever heard the name James. As in LeBron James, high school basketball standout and eventual first pick in this year’s NBA Draft.Everybody has chosen to look at LeBron and say that he is the reason for his increased media hype and breakdown of high school sports. But he isn’t.The pre-LeBron era prepared for the present-LeBron and post- LeBron era to get out of hand. The destruction of high school athletics, or better yet OHSAA (The Ohio High School Athletics Association) and Akron-St. Vincent St. Mary (SVSM), started before LeBron James’ mother nicknamed him “Bron-Bron” as a child.The explosion of prep-athletics progressed similar to the progression of hip-hop in what we call pop culture.The destruction started when the first college or pro coach set out to find that special player. It continued when recruiting analysts were given the permission to tag, number, and rank every player from fifth grade and up like a prized bull at the fair.Nobody chose to stop it then. They liked the idea of tracking a player from kindergarten to Madison Square Garden. It excited them to be able to claim, “I saw him back when.”We have watched it grow at a more rapid pace in the past 10 years. Starting with “The Fab Five” of Michigan basketball and “The Magnificent Seven” of the U.S. Olympic gymnastics team in 1996. Both groups of young adults were exploited to the point that one is an afterthought in the eyes of a university and the NCAA, and the other graced the cover of Wheaties before most of them could buy cigarettes. Those two groups led to the media push on other youngsters such as the Williams sisters, Tiger Woods, Kevin Garnett, Kobe Bryant, Tracy McGrady and james.The media, sports fans and other curious outsiders created this situation for James. But this issue did not just pop up. It did not start with the Hummer that took the principal’s spot in the school parking lot and eventually backed in to an elderly woman’s vehicle. It didn’t even begin when SVSM basketball games were placed on pay-per-view, or when Sports Illustrated put a high school junior on the cover and called him “King James.”The issue began when the normal high school “student-athlete” became what is now seen as an “athlete-marketable youngster’s name.” The only way to fix it is to place the foundation of high school athletics back on the solid rock that it was originally built. It has to be made whole again, and we have to see it as an amateur sport that prepares young minds to become good people instead of great athletes.