What It Takes to Add a New School Sport
April 5, 2019
Now with spring sports starting, questions about adding a sport are floating around. Examples can include soccer and lacrosse, so I sat down with Mr. O’Connor to talk about the rules and regulations about adding a sport and if there are possibilities of Weedsport adding another sport any time soon in the near future.
Q: What are some things to consider when adding a sport to Weedsport’s athletic program?
Mr. O’Connor: “The first thing I would look into is if there is interest from students. Do we have enough students to make a team, and what impact the new sport will make on other athletic programs? We have a generally small number of students at Weedsport, so adding a sport to an athletic program can cause a negative effect on another existing program.”
Editor’s Note: If Weedsport were to add a soccer program, we could lose football and field hockey players. Most likely, there wouldn’t be enough athletes to make a full soccer team, full football team, and full field hockey team.
O’Connor: “I’d also say that you have to be aware of the cost that comes with adding a sport, some sports cost more than other sports. You also have to think about transportation. You have to be aware of if we have enough bus drivers to handle extra trips for another sport. Another thing – is there an existing league for a particular sport so that we have other competitors to compete against?”
Q: Is there a sport that we have considered adding before?
O’Connor: “We have a soccer program for youth here and it periodically comes up about a soccer program, but like what I mentioned earlier, the numbers have to be there. It would have a negative impact on other sports that we already have here at Weedsport, but if we had enough kids, I would definitely go all for it. I have seen other schools add sports, and that new sport steals just enough kids from the other existing sports, and I just don’t want that to happen here at Weedsport.”
“A sport that we are thinking about adding is bowling. For bowling you don’t need a full team, you just need about 5 to 7 kids to make a team, and I’m mainly just interested in trying to get kids to wear the Weedsport green and white to represent our school.”
Q: Do you think that Weedsport will have soccer?
Mr. O’connor: “I would stay away from words like ever or never because I don’t know what will happen 10 years from now. If we get more kids and we can handle something like that for the long term, I would say maybe that would be a possibility if we had more kids. For smaller team sports it would be more possible to add to Weedsport because we just don’t have enough kids to make a 10 to 15 player team, it would just hurt other teams.”