[kidlexington]

What's your thoughts on this. I don't see it benefitting anyone.

For a high school to deny a single one of their students the opportunity to participate in order to benefit another kid who’s not the school’s responsibility seems like malfeasance to me.

Remember why we have high school athletics? Many high school students who participate in high school athletics benefit academically when they work harder academically to maintain eligibility. In some cases they attend tutoring and accept remedial help they would otherwise skip. In many cases, classroom behavior improves, which benefits the student athlete and the rest of the class. Their feeling of belonging to a team may postpone or eliminate dropping out of high school, and may be their most important high school memory. Learning to be part of a team improves their social outcomes. In worst cases, some of these kids go home to homeless shelters after practices and games, and in some cases the team shoes are the only new shoes the kid ever gets. High school sports are for high school students. Eveery kid cut from a roster loses these opportunities and motivators.

I wouldn’t worry too much about “denying opportunity” to holdback-Johnny after his folks wanted to get him an advantage over others by tilting the playing field his way in the first place. As to talented middle school kids who aren’t holdbacks, I can tell you from experience they’ll be thrilled and always remember the good times if they put up 25 a night for their 8th grade team and help all their classmates win a trophy.