Confessions of a Newtown Sports Parent

I am currently obsessed with how school enrollment impacts results for our high school sports teams.

I have two major issues driving this obsession, and neither will be resolved here in this particular item, so please feel free to settle in for a multi-installment blog experience.

First – I think we have to change the way the high school conferences are set up – at least in our immediate area. Second, it amazes me that so many small schools can consistently compete with much bigger schools in so many sports, and I don't really know how they do it.

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When I moved here 14 years ago and I started watching Connecticut high school sports, I remember thinking how cool the conference championships were. Where I grew up on Long Island, depending upon the sport, you played a league schedule. If you ended up as one of the top teams in your league you got into the Suffolk County playoffs, then if you won that you played the Nassau County Champ for the Long Island championship, then (depending on the sport) you went into state playoffs.

Pretty simple, right? The whole thing was basically “one and done”. Win or go home.

Here in Connecticut, you have the conference tournaments. The kids who play in those tournaments experience post-season play, perhaps even getting to feel the thrill of being “Champions”, which is pretty rare. Even if they lose in the conference tourney, chances are they will get another shot in the state playoffs, which are divided up into Classes according to school size. And quite often, smaller schools that don’t win the conference tournament go on to win the Class S or Class M state tournament, which is arguably a bigger deal for them because that's more of a reasonably comparable matchup.

And as the contradictions between the conference and state tournaments have become more apparent to me, I now believe that the conference system – tournaments included - is flawed enough to render them relatively meaningless to all schools except those who ultimately win.

Because we just can’t expect the small schools – in some cases TINY schools - to consistently compete against schools that are often three times or even four times bigger than they are.

Or can we? Because it happens all the time.

Okay, so maybe you’re a big “Hoosiers” fan, right? I know that movie was based on fact, but that David-Slays-Goliath stuff happens once in a blue moon. The fact is, mathematics and the law of averages dictate that the decidedly bigger school should basically crush the considerably smaller school every time.

Simply by the law of averages, high schools like Newtown, Pomperaug, Masuk and New Milford should never lose to schools like Weston, Barlow, Oxford or New Fairfield. No disparagement to those smaller schools – and they shouldn’t feel disparaged…because they DO beat those bigger schools at many sports, and that’s testimony to the old adage “that’s why they play the games” cliché.

But bigger schools have bigger pools of student athletes to draw from, and that should mean they have the better chance to field more athletic teams. There are exceptions to the rule, where smaller schools with tradition-rich programs prevail on a regular basis in specific sports, like Weston in tennis and New Fairfield’s recent success in boy’s lacrosse. Those sports have developed a culture that has drawn the best athletes to them, either through exposure to previous generations of success or simple demographic facts.

Many private schools have it figured out - Fairfield Prep does it for hockey and lacrosse and Lauralton Hall and Kolbe-Cathedral do for basketball. These schools build top-tier programs in specific sports regardless of enrollment or whatever Class they are in because they can pull kids in from anywhere. So let’s take the private schools out of the discussion, because they just aren’t bound by the same rules as the publics.

There are basically four major conferences in the western half of the state – Newtown is in the South-West Conference – the SWC. Then there’s the big boy, the Fairfield County Interscholastic Athletic Conference (FCIAC), the Southern Connecticut Conference (SCC), and the Central Connecticut Conference (CCC).

This topic has relevance here in Newtown because no conference in the state has a more disparate set of school sizes than our very own SWC. Just to ground you in some data, here's the fall 2011 enrollment breakdown for the SWC teams who compete in almost every sport that Newtown plays.

Newtown: 866 boys/863 girls - 1729 total
New Milford: 761/749 - 1510
Pomperaug: 722/662 - 1384
Masuk: 648/664 - 1312
Bunnell: 615/615 - 1230
Stratford: 501/507 - 1008
Brookfield: 500/500 - 1000
New Fairfield: 482/503 - 985
Joel Barlow: 461/513 - 974
Bethel: 465/495 - 960
Weston: 380/412 - 792
Oxford: 324/307 - 631
Lauralton Hall:   0/437 - 437
Notre Dame: 203/213 - 416
Immaculate: 169/179 - 348

There are essentially five public schools in the SWC that are half the size or less of Newtown. Brookfield and Stratford aren’t that much bigger than New Fairfield or Barlow but you have to draw the line somewhere.

So really, logic dictates that those five smaller schools shouldn’t be that competitive with the biggest five schools, all of whom have at least 1,200 students.

But somehow, the small schools are competitive – and they win their fair share of the games with the bigger schools. For instance, let’s look at how some Newtown teams fared against the smaller schools in the 2010-2011 seasons.

• Bethel beat Newtown in football and Oxford won in soccer.
• In girls’ field hockey, the Nighthawks lost to Bethel and Immaculate.
• Boys’ basketball lost to New Fairfield.
• Boys’ lacrosse always has to fight like dogs to beat Weston, New Fairfield and Barlow, and while they went unbeaten against that top SWC trio last year that was the first time it had ever happened in school history.
• The girl’s lacrosse team won its regular season matchup and seventh straight SWC title game over Joel Barlow - each by a one goal margin. 
• Bethel and Weston both beat Newtown's baseball team.
• Both the Nighthawk boys and girls tennis teams lost to Weston.

I could go over every sport and every year, but you get my basic point.

Sometimes, size just doesn’t matter.

But by all logical parameters, it absolutely should matter. And the fact that “mathematics” and “the law of averages” don’t make Newtown's dominance over the small school a given really has me scratching my head. Sure, our Nighthawk teams win plenty of games, produce excellent student-athletes and have great success in so many sports – but frankly, given the relative size of the school, you could make the argument that Newtown teams should win much more than they do.

I have some theories on this (you knew I would), but none of them are very well thought out just now. They all point to early stages of child development and include a) geographic limitations like two acre zoning and a lack of quality cul-de-sacs; b) an exclusionary youth sports culture; and most of all, c) a focus on over-structured, hyper-organized sports instead of simply letting our kids play.

The games our kids play when they are truly "little kids" should be just that – games - and not a procession of pay-to-play clinics and camps and U6 travel teams and summer/winter leagues and championship tournaments.

None of this is exclusive to Newtown, but when you compare us to the small schools we play against there has to be something going on here – and it's likely not in our water – that evens out the playing field.

And I want to know what that “something” is.

I also want to see if there's a better construct for the conferences – including having the private schools play against themselves and not against the public school kids who go where they go because they live there and not simply because they want to go there (and in many cases, because they can go there).

I’m going to look into all of it and see what I can come up with. I’m going to ask parents, players, coaches, teachers and administrators…from here and from elsewhere.

You name it.

No, really – you name it. Because I'm asking you, too. Let me know where you think this needs to go – assuming you care. I told you, I’m obsessed – I find it pretty compelling. And however you feel about it, speak up.

I’ll get back to you on it.