THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, April 24, 1995 TAG: 9504210013
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A6 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 72 lines
The front of a recent Sports section contained two basketball stories: one happy, one sad.
The happy story said Maury High School graduate Joe Smith would announce he was entering the National Basketball Association draft. A tall University of Maryland sophomore, he is expected to sign for millions of dollars, perhaps tens of millions. If you put all the money he'll earn in a single stack, it would topple.
And that lucky son of a gun will be paid and cheered for playing a game he loves, one that millions play every day for fun.
The Smith story was at the top of the page, and there's no telling how many young players read it and dreamed of glory and riches for themselves and went outside to practice shooting baskets.
Now the sad story, at the bottom of the page: Of the area male high-school players that coaches deemed good enough to play at the top college level, none is projected to qualify to enroll at a Division I college under NCAA freshman eligibility rules - a 2.0 minimum grade-point average and a minimum score of 700 on the Scholastic Assessment Test.
``What makes this sadder,'' wrote staff writer Rich Radford, ``is that the Class of '95 got a break when the NCAA voted to delay new, stricter standards until next year.''
This was considered an outstanding year for local talent, but not for meeting eligibility requirements.
Last year was barely better in the classroom. None of the best Group AAA high-school basketball players qualified for Division I eligibility, though one talented Division AA player did. He was Howard Frier, from Suffolk's Nansemond River High School, who signed with the University of Colorado.
Jack Baker, who coached Smith at Maury, said of athletes' academic failures:
``There are a lot of problems. You can't pinpoint it to one particular thing. A lot of it has to do with their background and upbringing, where academics weren't stressed and still aren't. A lot of kids don't see the value of an education. It just doesn't appeal to them in the eighth, ninth or 10th grades. Then somebody tells them they're good enough to play college basketball, and in some cases it's too late to turn the academics around.''
No one cheers when a young man turns off the TV and sits down to study. Everyone cheers when a young man dunks.
Smith probably will earn more his first year in basketball than the combined annual salaries of all the teachers he's had from kindergarten on. But far fewer than even one-tenth of 1 percent of basketball players ever make a living playing the game. In stark contrast, tens of millions make a living from what they learned in school.
Education opens doors that otherwise remain shut. Books open doors. Acquiring the habit of thinking opens doors.
It must be hard to study when an entire city will cheer you when you don't - when, instead, you dribble, pass, rebound and shoot.
There's time for both basketball and books, but for most, studying is hard and playing a game is fun.
It may be as simple as this: Most children value education if their parents do, and most don't if their parents don't. Certainly, every moment a parent spends reading to a child or teaching a child to read is an investment in the child's whole life.
Someone has to stop the game and hold the basketball and tell youths that learning what is taught in classrooms is an essential step in life. Even a person as talented as Smith could not have gotten where he is without playing big-time college ball.
Did anyone read the sad Sports section story that day, then open a book to study? by CNB