Showing posts with label Florida High School Athletic Association. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Florida High School Athletic Association. Show all posts
Sunday, December 27, 2009
ONN: Republicans hit a home run with new high school curriculum
'Students First In Line' Program To Offer Job Training At Needy Schools
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Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Why European Football is better than American Football
This week there is a Title IX meeting in Washington that is being attended by top female athletes (see the companion piece. ) I have been involved with recreational soccer since my children were six or seven. There were always bot a boy's and girl's league unlike American football which has almost always been exclusively a male sport.
Florida has been a huge budget problem like California. Some of the budget problems relate to eight years of ill-advised tax cuts by Jeb Bush and the Florida GOP. The Florida High School Athletic Association (FHSAA) cut high school sports by 20 per cent with the exception of--you guessed it—football and cheerleading. The FHSAA is being sued under Title IX.
Florida has been a huge budget problem like California. Some of the budget problems relate to eight years of ill-advised tax cuts by Jeb Bush and the Florida GOP. The Florida High School Athletic Association (FHSAA) cut high school sports by 20 per cent with the exception of--you guessed it—football and cheerleading. The FHSAA is being sued under Title IX.
By the way, the US men's soccer team made an improbable comeback in the Confederation's Cup which is a dry run for the FIFA World Cup . it is in the semis-finals and will play Spain next.
When I was a kid if you didn't have above average athletic ability, your chances of playing sports past elementary or middle school was limited. Football was one of the more expensive sports because parents had to buy an assortment of expensive protective gear. Hockey is the US is even worse and many parent shell out more than US$1000 dollars for skates, shoulder pads and other protective gear.
European football or what we call soccer was uncommon even 20 years ago in the US. The only continuous action sport that kids played back then was basketball. I never particularly liked baseball because a lot of the players would just sat around waiting for something to happen. It was a hurry and wait type of sport with the innings and field changes. I always wondered about cricket, but this sport is rarely played at all in the US. What sort of sport could have a score like 257-0? The losing team must feel terrible after such a drubbing.
American football is also a hurry up and wait sport because each side gets a series of four downs to move the ball ten years. It is not continuous action like rugby. With all the time outs and field injuries, American football games creep along. With all of the strategizing on the field, a game with 5 minutes left on the clock can take 20 minutes to finish. In professional football, once the instant replays stated to mollify fans and coaches, the entire game crept nearly came to a standstill. The National Football League finally made some reforms with time outs to speed up the game. But American football will never be a continuous action sport like international football.
A football play starts when the center hikes the football backwards between to his legs to the quarterback. The quarterback may stand directly behind the center, giving the sport a homo-erotic look to the uninitiated. In the early days of the sport they experimented with different ways of starting plays, but none work as well as the homo-like-hike. Once the quarterback received the ball from the center, he could runs pass, hand off or lateral the ball to to other offensive backs or ends.
I always thought American professional sports were pretentious. We have the World Series in baseball, but no teams outside of the US and Canada play it. Another US sport, softball, was dropped from the Olympics.
When my children were very young we started them in soccer. It doesn't take much to put a soccer team together just soccer shoes, knee pads, some uniforms and soccer balls. The sport is continuous action and only stopped after a goal, a ball going out of bounds or an injury. One of my children played recreational soccer until he was 18. My second child played club soccer until he was 14. He traveled all over the state playing other club teams in tournaments. Club soccer was an essential step for kids who wanted to play high school soccer. A one hour game usually took an hour and half unlike football that could take 2-1/2 hours.
America needs to move away from insular sports like baseball and American football and into international sports. I have watched the last two FIFA World Cups for both men and women and it is exciting to see a real international tournament with national teams competing against each other. Of course, I have to watch the live games on Spanish TV because the US stations don't pick up the international games live. Soccer is much bigger sport in Mexico than it is in the US.
I was also elated when I read yesterday that President Obama will attend the opening of the Men's 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa. This event will be attended by all sorts of world leaders.
Of course, he will also have to attend 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup in Germany. His wife and two daughters would be unhappy if he he missed the women's competition. Traditionally the US woman's team has been stronger than the men's team.
We now how a more cosmopolitan president than our last leader. He has been giving sports a big push including intentional soccer. International sports is another means of diplomacy. The US needs to start being a better international player. President Obama is up to the task. The FIFA World Cups are a good place for the president to visit.
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White House Roundtable on Title IX while Florida is clearly violating this law
Editor's Soap Box: While a meeting is going on in Washington on Title IX, parents are suing the Florida High School Athletic association for mandating 20 per cuts to al high school sports except football and 'cheerleading.'
American football is an over-hyped high school sport that is primarily played in the US. It is not an international sport like soccer that is called football in the rest of the world. In addition, Cheerleading is a 'cosmetic sport' like bodybuilding in which appearance is as important as athletic ability.
If the Florida High School Athletic Association had been a little more 'with it' they might have fully funded women's soccer in high school or field hockey. Football games can certainly be conducted without cheerleaders. In addition, female sports may be more important that male in the US. Without our female athletes the US would do poorly in the Olympics.
WASHINGTON – The White House will be holding a roundtable on the 37th Anniversary of Title IX featuring Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett, Education Secretary Arne Duncan and an all-star line-up of women athletes and scientists.
In addition to the roundtable participants, which include Billie Jean King and Dominique Dawes, 30 local high school aged girls will be in the audience along with several professional athletes and well-known Title IX advocates. The roundtable is being held tomorrow, Tuesday, June 23, at 2:30 PM, and several of the participants will be available for questions after the event.
The roundtable will also be streamed live on the web both at WhiteHouse.gov/live, and as part of an innovative Facebook application that allows users to both watch the live-stream and be part of an online chat about the roundtable simultaneously.
The roundtable will be kept up to date during the event on the comments and questions coming in through the chat, which will take place at this address: http://apps.facebook.com/whitehouselive/. Non-facebook users can also submit their comments and questions at a special comment form that the White House will be monitoring during the event at the standard live-stream address: http://www.whitehouse.gov/live/
After the Roundtable, Ms. King, Ms. Dawes and others will hold a media availability at the stakeout location outside of the West Wing. The Roundtable is expected to run for an hour, and the availability will begin shortly after the Roundtable concludes.
Title IX fight in Florida
The fight over high school sports cuts has taken a new turn in Florida. On Tuesday, attorneys representing the group Florida Parents for Athletic Equity filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging schedule reductions passed by the Florida High School Athletic Association in April.
Policy 6 passed by a 9-6 vote and cut the number of varsity games teams could play by 20 percent for all sports except football and competitive cheerleading. Junior varsity schedules were cut by 40 percent.
The decision to exempt varsity football,the sport with the largest number of male participants, has prompted critics to claim the reductions violate Title IX, the federal law prohibiting gender discrimination in sports and other educational programs.
Earlier this month, Title IX advocate and Jacksonville attorney Nancy Hogshead-Makar spoke with FHSAA executive director Roger Dearing in hopes of finding a compromise to the group's gender equity concerns.
Last week, proposals were discussed that would have allowed individual schools to decide on either cutting football games or adding girls' sports contests.
No decision was reached however, prompting Tuesday's filing.
"We tried everything we could to get the FHSAA to respond without a lawsuit," said Miami attorney David Baron, who is involved with the case. "It was not our wish to litigate. It was our wish to show them the law and have them comply.
The motion, filed on behalf of six parents from across Florida, asks for the game reductions to be rescinded or applied equally.
It also requests an injunction keeping the FHSAA from applying the cuts during the upcoming school year.
Many schools have already put together shortened schedules. In South Florida, officials expect Broward County to keep the schedule reductions.
Before April's vote, the school board welcomed the cuts saying they were a compromise that helped save individual sports like boys' volleyball, water polo, golf and tennis.
"We feel like there's no turning back," said Damian Huttenhoff, the county's director of athletics and activities. "Our new gender equity numbers came out and countywide, we're 50-50. We increased our female participation this year by 800 athletes. We feel we're in a strong position."
Christy Cabrera Chirinos can be reached at ccabrera@SunSentinel.com.
www.sun-sentinel.com/sports/highschool/broward/sfl-title-ix-lawsuit-s061709,0,5617890.story
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American football is an over-hyped high school sport that is primarily played in the US. It is not an international sport like soccer that is called football in the rest of the world. In addition, Cheerleading is a 'cosmetic sport' like bodybuilding in which appearance is as important as athletic ability. If the Florida High School Athletic Association had been a little more 'with it' they might have fully funded women's soccer in high school or field hockey. Football games can certainly be conducted without cheerleaders. In addition, female sports may be more important that male in the US. Without our female athletes the US would do poorly in the Olympics.
WASHINGTON – The White House will be holding a roundtable on the 37th Anniversary of Title IX featuring Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett, Education Secretary Arne Duncan and an all-star line-up of women athletes and scientists.
In addition to the roundtable participants, which include Billie Jean King and Dominique Dawes, 30 local high school aged girls will be in the audience along with several professional athletes and well-known Title IX advocates. The roundtable is being held tomorrow, Tuesday, June 23, at 2:30 PM, and several of the participants will be available for questions after the event.
The roundtable will also be streamed live on the web both at WhiteHouse.gov/live, and as part of an innovative Facebook application that allows users to both watch the live-stream and be part of an online chat about the roundtable simultaneously.
The roundtable will be kept up to date during the event on the comments and questions coming in through the chat, which will take place at this address: http://apps.facebook.com/whitehouselive/. Non-facebook users can also submit their comments and questions at a special comment form that the White House will be monitoring during the event at the standard live-stream address: http://www.whitehouse.gov/live/
After the Roundtable, Ms. King, Ms. Dawes and others will hold a media availability at the stakeout location outside of the West Wing. The Roundtable is expected to run for an hour, and the availability will begin shortly after the Roundtable concludes.
Title IX fight in Florida
The fight over high school sports cuts has taken a new turn in Florida. On Tuesday, attorneys representing the group Florida Parents for Athletic Equity filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging schedule reductions passed by the Florida High School Athletic Association in April.
Policy 6 passed by a 9-6 vote and cut the number of varsity games teams could play by 20 percent for all sports except football and competitive cheerleading. Junior varsity schedules were cut by 40 percent.
The decision to exempt varsity football,the sport with the largest number of male participants, has prompted critics to claim the reductions violate Title IX, the federal law prohibiting gender discrimination in sports and other educational programs.
Earlier this month, Title IX advocate and Jacksonville attorney Nancy Hogshead-Makar spoke with FHSAA executive director Roger Dearing in hopes of finding a compromise to the group's gender equity concerns.
Last week, proposals were discussed that would have allowed individual schools to decide on either cutting football games or adding girls' sports contests.
No decision was reached however, prompting Tuesday's filing.
"We tried everything we could to get the FHSAA to respond without a lawsuit," said Miami attorney David Baron, who is involved with the case. "It was not our wish to litigate. It was our wish to show them the law and have them comply.
The motion, filed on behalf of six parents from across Florida, asks for the game reductions to be rescinded or applied equally.
It also requests an injunction keeping the FHSAA from applying the cuts during the upcoming school year.
Many schools have already put together shortened schedules. In South Florida, officials expect Broward County to keep the schedule reductions.
Before April's vote, the school board welcomed the cuts saying they were a compromise that helped save individual sports like boys' volleyball, water polo, golf and tennis.
"We feel like there's no turning back," said Damian Huttenhoff, the county's director of athletics and activities. "Our new gender equity numbers came out and countywide, we're 50-50. We increased our female participation this year by 800 athletes. We feel we're in a strong position."
Christy Cabrera Chirinos can be reached at ccabrera@SunSentinel.com.
www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Advisory-Valerie-Jarrett-and-Education-Secretary-Arne-Duncan-to-Hold-White-House-Roundtable-on-Title-IX/
www.sun-sentinel.com/sports/highschool/broward/sfl-title-ix-lawsuit-s061709,0,5617890.story
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