Scoring Points: Saving Spring Sports
Just For Fun April 5, 2020
(Although Kemp has since closed schools for the remainder of the year. FYN Sunday Edition is still running this opinion in its original form to highlight some Georgia student athletes and their efforts for Spring Sports this year.)
With Georgia Governor Brian Kemp extending order for schools to remain closed until April 24th, April 27th is the new date that everyone should have circled on their calendars. That is the date that schools will reopen and high school sports should resume, however the threat of Covid-19 cancelling the rest of the spring season still lingers. Georgia High School Student-Athletes are starting to voice their concerns about the cancellation of their season. In an effort to perhaps calm some of those fears, GHSA Executive Director Dr. Robin Hines said Friday that Georgia still hopes to have some sort of spring sports this year.
Hines told a reporter of the Oconee Enterprise, “We would do everything that we could do to have some sort of abbreviated season and abbreviated championships. That would be our first goal that we would like to see happen. That goes on down to it being after the school year ends where it’s safe to do things again to allow schools to play games and have a senior night. The worst case scenario would be to cancel the spring season. But here at the Georgia School Association I’m not prepared to do that now.”
That worst case scenario is exactly what Georgia High School athletes are worried about. Georgia athlete Daniel Martin started a petition on Change.org that can be found here, a petition that already has over 30,000 signatures that is simply titled, Do Not Cancel Spring High School Sports. Many athletes all across North Georgia and the rest of the state have signed this petition in an effort to perhaps have one last couple of practices and games together with their squad. For some kids, they are facing the reality that they may never get to throw another pitch again or run in another meet. A reality that some might not be able to come to terms with yet and maybe they won’t have to. With as much support as this petition is getting and with as many athletes that are speaking their minds on social media across the state it is going to be a really tough decision that the state is going to have to make, in regards to a full cancellation of the season.
One positive thing that can be taken away from all this is it’s good to see the kids standing up for themselves and saying that they understand that this is a situation that can’t be dealt with lightly, but they also need us to understand where they are coming from. Hopefully Dr. Robin Hines is a man of his word and will do everything in his power to do right by these kids.
Scoring Points: Recruiting amid the shutdown
Just For Fun March 29, 2020
With all NCAA sports being shut down for the rest of the school year and with all high school sports in North Georgia and the surrounding area being axed for the foreseeable future, what does that mean for college recruiting?
The two biggest issues for recruiting as of now are how the NCAA, NAIA and NJCAA handle the extra year of eligibility that the current spring semester college athletes will be given. The NCAA has announced that they will be giving this year of eligibility back to those athletes if they want it, but what has not been announced and what I don’t think anyone in the aforementioned establishments even knows, is how the scholarships are going to work. Extending scholarships to these athletes coming back could really cut into the scholarship dollars that current high school seniors and juniors might be expecting. I would think that the only logical thing that the NCAA could do is to say “if there are 4 seniors on your team we’ll give you 4 extra scholarships to offer,” and just give and exception to being over the scholarship limit for the upcoming year.
This scholarship exception would answer the first problem at hand, but perhaps an even bigger problem is how can spring high school athletes gain exposure when there are no games to produce anything that colleges can scout?
In high school, I think most would agree that junior year is the year that most young athletes flourish and pop up on college recruits radars. In the area that we live in and enjoy, I know first hand that most athletes have wanting to compete in a conference or state championship at the forefront of their mind over college recruiting, but with the spring semester of sports being taken away and with no chance at being able to do either of those, most are switching their focus to how this is going to impact them long term.
Speaking to some scouts from local schools and colleges the answer that most had for fringe highschool athletes without any offers or much exposure to recruits, was to put together an email that explains why you think you’d be a good fit at the school you’re interested in. Tell them in detail what you bring to the table athletically and academically, along with your transcripts and any tape that you might have that could set you apart from the rest of the other 8 million high school athletes in the US.
In this day and age with social media and the internet at everyone’s fingertips, good players always surface. If you have a high school athlete at home or you’re a kid reading this worried about what your future holds, maybe the best thing you can do is take a breath. Go get up some shots in your driveway and put in some work at home. We’re in a situation that nobody has ever been in before. It’s more of the unknown that worries a lot of people, so control the things that you can and stay in shape and get to emailing those coaches.