From Non-Woodstocker
Thought I would revisit this topic in light of the tremendous SUCCESS of the winter athletic programs at the Academy. The silence on this board in that regard is remarkable, but not at all surprising. How very easy it was to deride and belittle the Academy and it’s athletics (and athletes by some of you!) when the football team was languishing through a difficult season. People jumping all over each other to question everything about the Academy from financial management to supposed emphasis on pitiful and unsuccessful athletic programs and facilities at the expense of science, arts etc. (A ridiculous assertion in the eyes of anyone who sees the academic success of Academy students).
Over the course of this winter season, the girls gymnastic team won their third straight CT state title, and finished 2nd in New England. The Cheerleaders won the ECC championship, Girls Basketball qualified for the State tournament for the first time since 2006, and the boys Bball team won the ECC Large school division championship for the first time in history and are currently enjoying a very good run in the State tournament, ranked #2 and playing in the semifinals later this week. I understand that to many all of this tremendous success is rather trivial, after all its all only silly games, but as for me, I salute the players, coaches and fans at/or the Academy on thier hard won victories and achievements – GO CENTAURS!
Wrap-up of the Boys Basketball season.
PS: They put down a new (used) floor for basketball in the gym. before everyone gets excited about where they got the money, it was raised by the Woodstock Foundation for the express purpose of replacing the existing floor. I believe $60k was raised in a very short time and no doubt that is going to drive quite a few of you folks crazy. I on the other hand think it’s terrific!
Champion WA Cheerleaders
Reporting on school sports is always appreciated.
Excellent. Go Centaurs! Close one for the boys last night, but they prevailed. On to semi finals!
Its great the teams are doing well. Really, it is. But I would much rather talk about how WA’s test scores stack up against good schools than how its basketball team does, and am much more interested in how many kids get into top tier four year colleges. Unfortunately there is less to brag about there.
The football program, with the resources that have gone into it and its success, is brought up as an example of misplaced priorities, not to belittle the efforts of the kids in it
Doubtful,
Do you have any statistics to back your claim that Woodstock Academy students do not “get into top tier four year colleges”? Can you give examples of colleges you feel are “top tier”? If a top student at WA wants to go to UConn and not some $50,000 private college does that reflect poorly on the student and high school?
Why is the football program always brought up as being unsuccessful? If 60-100 high school students are working hard everyday, competing to the best of their ability, developing leadership skills and sportsmanship, is that unsuccessful? These are not pro athletes making millions of dollars. High school sports are about more than wins and losses. It is great that the winter teams are winning, but if they weren’t I would not say they are unsuccessful.
Libdem, it was indeed a close one, a tremendous basketball game played by BOTH teams. The Wilton kids were a class act, as were our own.
There are personal stories of triumph involved in this season, that I cannot go into here because it is private information. I wish though that I could, because there are a couple of real inspiring stories that make give those who are so quick to minimize athletics reason to pause and reconsider. The stories however are far to personal to share on this forum. Suffice to say that the win loss record is not even half the story and there are indeed individuals whose lives have been positively impacted this year in ways that they will not soon forget.
Please excuse my typos!
ev,
Right on but your words will fall on deaf ears. Non-Woodstocker, your also right on, there are so many personal stories intertwined with WA Athletics that aren’t told. People get so wrapped up in debate that they don’t consider the whole picture. Athletics, although costly, can be a major part in a student’s life. Just like music, drama, etc. These are important additions to academics and WA has a great mix.
What a great game that was! Alumni Field House was rocking, attendance was nearly 1200. Largest crowd I’ve seen/heard of for a high school basketball game @ WA. From the video clips I saw on youtube, this one was worth the price of admission.
Mr.Smith has done a great job, and his positive energy has always helped him teach and relate to young people. Not to mention he has a great heart and truly cares about the community. This team is one of those teams that comes around every 25-30 years @ a school the size of WA. These students/athletes seem to be hard working, coach-able, and of course talented.
As for the floor, it is about time. The rubber floor was actually replaced in 1992 when the entire school was renovated. Not sure why people think it is the original rubber floor from 1971, that one had a blue mural of a Centaur at center court and outlines of a track lanes on the outer parts. It sounds like the Academy plans on renovating the Field House, privately funded would be my guess. The new athletic director seems to have a great vision for the sports teams, and improving the athletic facilities is one of his responsibilities. I would love to see it look similar to Tantasqua’s new field house/athletic center.
Very nice to hear Non-Woodstocker. Thats what its all about. Personal and collective triumphs. On and off the field. This is why education funding is so important. It provides the opportunities our students deserve and can grow from. Whether from sports or from the classroom.
WE should be able to have it all. Its an investment in our fine kids that pays a lifetime of dividends to them, their families and the community.
Lib-
Yes, we should be able to have it all. But the reality is, for various reasons, we can’t. So we have to have the discussion of the appropriate portion to budget to athletics, arts, academics, etc and part of that in WA’s case surely has to be whether the proportionatley large resources that have been put into football has been good for the students, the town, and in the long run WA.
I’m not suggesting athletics aren’t important, or that the bball teams success isnt great. However, mindless cheerleading is not a good thing.
Yes Doubtful we should talk about reality and ask ourselves why we can’t adequately fund education or other investments that promote middle class growth.
The DOW has hit record highs this week and corporate earnings are off the charts. Corporate income tax revenue as a % of GDP is near a record low. The wealthy in this country- the 1%- continue to profit while the rest of us remain in recession. The top 1% owns 42% percent of the financial wealth of the nation, while the bottom 60% own only 2.3%. From 2009-2011, 100% of all new income went to the top 1%, while the bottom 99% actually saw a loss in their income. The US has the most unequal distribution of income of any major country in the industrialized world.
Instead of investing in our country and its people, our wealth- which is created by all of us- is trickling upwards while austerity is being inflicted downwards. The 99% did not create this economic crisis, nor did they create the deficits- and yet the losses were socialized and the gains privatized to the 1%. Last week we succumbed to sequestration that cuts investments in education, amongst other things that stunt economic growth-hurting the working class once again. This week the House Republicans continue their 5 year pattern of intransigency, framing the national discussion around austerity-cutting medicare and social security-while protecting the 1% from having to pay more taxes.
So yes, this is our reality. But we do not need to accept it without a fight. We should not stop hoping, dreaming and striving for more of our fair share, for more investments into our education, for jobs, our healthcare, our social security, and our infrastructure. These are the things that built the American middle class and made our country great. They are being systematically being taken away and we are bending over in unabashed aquiescence because we think that we cannot change this reality. That somehow we deserve this. But thats not true. WE don’t deserve this and we can change it. We can have it all and we can be fiscally responsible.
Doubtful: “mindless cheerleading” Wow. And here I was thinking that cheerleading involved more mind power than the rest of the sports.
Doubtful – Now that is just plain mean and nasty. Mindless cheerleading??? Those young ladies worked thier butts off night after night for six months, developing the tumbling and cheering routines that won them the ECC championship. Have you seen those girls vault and roll across the gymnasium floor. The did it last night at the state semifinal game and even the opposing teams fans were very impressed. Your comment about them and your repeated mistaken statements about expenditures on the football program (again I ask, are you referring to the MULTI-SPORT’ turf athletic field’ used by several different teams at the school?) These statements reveal your petulant bias. Was your own high school experience that miserable??? How would you feel if someone made such callous remarks about something your child put thier heart and soul into. shameful!
OK, this is kind of a weird position for me to be in. I’m not accustomed to coming to the defense of ‘doubtful’ very often.
I didn’t read his ‘mindless cheerleading’ comment as a slight against WA’s cheerleading squad. I read his comment to be his response to what he felt LibDem was doing – namely that LibDem seemed to be cheerleading for the cause of having it all; having great extracurricular programs AND strong academic curriculum in our schools. This while ‘doubtful’ clearly feels that such a goal is ideal, but not very realistic given the limitations of current funding structures.
Of course, I could be completely wrong in my interpretation. Lord knows, nearly every opinion I express here finds a pretty limited audience (in terms of number, certainly not intelligence). But that’s how I took ‘doubtful’s’ remark.
Perhaps he might like to return to clarify what exactly he was referring to?
My comment regarding “cheerleading” has been misinterpreted. I was not referring to the girls cheering in the gym, but rather to those who see competitive sports(although they are important) as far more important than they really are and pay far more attention to the success of athletic teams than academic accomplishment. This is an issue in many places and certainly here in Woodstock.
NC- My comment 15 was written before I saw your #14, but I am glad some people read it correctly
a double entendre perhaps?
Naturally, I fall in line with Doubtful. Non-woodstocker, you simply can not deny that there is no parity with the amount of time and money spent to build a turf football field contrasted with any other non-academic program at the Academy. This development is a good example of how throwing lots of money at something will not create a good team or town-wide pride. In the end, Woodstock is not Stubenville, Ohio, thank goodness.
We will never know the amount spent but to put forth that the underlying motivation was to give room to and promote a number of sports at the school is preposterous. It was always about football. No one at the Cafe belittles or derides student success of any type. Priorities and parity are questioned only.
I agree with Newcomer’s interpretation of doubtful’s post. His/her entire post is directed at LibDem’s statement, “WE should be able to have it all” which is a concept. Doubtful maintains that the reality is we cannot have it all and must proportion the available funds between athletics and academics. To wrap this position up with a slam of the WA cheerleaders would be a complete non sequitur. However, a last line suggesting that mindless cheerleading (rah-rahing about how we can afford great athletics AND great academics) is “not a good thing,” ie, is a head in the sand attitude, makes perfect sense.
Do not misunderstand MY position. I disagree with doubtful. I believe there is enough to do both but as long as we have a top-heavy earnings structure in this country, a great many important programs will go under-funded. When the owner(s) of a company or the highest wage-earners keep for themselves tens of millions of dollars more than they can spend each year while denying a living wage to the people who do the work to produce the company’s service or product, it will seem to those workers, the 98%, that there is a lack of funds because most of us do in fact continue to have limited resources.
The sound and recording studio at the academy is state of the art, and although I do not know how much was spent on it, I do know it was a hefty sum, and I think that too is terrific, the music programs are among the finest in Connecticut. There have also been enormous expenditures for technology, big improvements much needed. Should the school build a new multi million dollar science lab, just so no one can accuse them of favoring athletic endeavors? As far as it ‘only being about football’ tell that to the Lacrosse players (male and female) who will be using the field all spring long, they may disagree. You also miss the point that there are VERY substantial savings to be gained as a return on investment of a turf field as opposed to spending MANY thousands EVERY year to rebuild an athletic field, not to mention the daily, weekly maintenance costs of the old grass fields, verus virtually ZERO maintanence of a turf tield, which is exactly why so many schools now install them, I think they could have done it for free, and as long as boys are paying football on it, you would be displeased!
N-Wdstker,
No, I like football and enjoy watching it with my son and husband. …(see Marylou’s new article. Admin)
WE WIN. Awesome to watch the WA boys win a STATE TITLE tonight. These are good, hardworking kids. The COMMUNITY and SCHOOL support displayed during their run to the title was inspiring.