Current sports eligibility rules are appropriate

The effort to raise academic standards is noble, but the McCook school board did the right thing Monday night in turning down new rules that would have tightened requirements for sports.

Under the proposal, which was defeated 5-1, teachers would have been required to report all students with failing grades every Friday. Students failing two or more classes would have had a week to raise their grades, or be ineligible for sports or other extracurricular activities the following week.

While it's good to set the bar high, there were valid arguments against the proposal.

For one thing, it would have been an additional burden on teachers, who may already spend too much time on duties not directly related to helping students learn. And not all class curriculums lend themselves to weekly grade reports.

For another, it makes the false assumption that participation in sports is a strong motivation for all students. A struggling, underweight, freshman football player has enough temptation to throw in the towel without additional stress from classroom work that is over his head.

And, as an administrator pointed out, it might be an instructional problem as much as it is a student's shortcoming.

But perhaps the best point was made by board member Tom Bredvick, who said "There are enough penalties for mistakes in life after school. I don't want to see a student make a mistake and decide to leave (school) rather than stay."

As Bredvick pointed out, sometimes a little success in athletics is enough to inspire a struggling student to stick it out in school long enough to earn a diploma.

McCook currently follows guidelines developed by the Nebraska School Activities Association, which require students to pass four classes the preceding semester for eligibility in events sanctioned by the NSAA.

It's important to keep to keep sports in proper perspective, and that's in second place behind academics.

But the current system strikes the right balance.