Baltimore County Public Schools is currently in a widely covered time where the climate for both staff and students alike is in need of a shift. Both communities feeling unsupported, uninformed and frustrated with the current situations governing them all, but I do see a potentially easy shift in the horizon...Sports!

It may seem too simple and disconnected from the larger monetary, safety and disciplinary issues at the top of the counties' agenda currently, but for the youth covered in this scope it may be the end all be all for a lot of developmental processes causing most other problems across the school system that have become consistently newsworthy.

Team sports, especially in the realm of all-encompassing support (all organizational control and governing through 1 entity), brings understanding order to most chaotic situations with the youth either directly or indirectly. They teach skills of collaboration, problem solving, accountability, work ethic, goal management and responsibility in a more easily identifiable and quantifiable manner for adolescents to not only learn & comprehend lessons of life athletically and non-athletically, but also gives them tangible reasons to make and stay consistent with fundamental changes.

Currently Baltimore County Public Schools does not offer many interscholastic sports options for the middle school level, and for the few that they do, unfortunately it is not very in depth or held in a regard where it would leave a sustainable impact. As of now only basketball runs a "Full" cross school schedule (though there are no opportunities or additional achievements {Playoffs/championship, tournament, cross division games etc) and is also the only team sport run interscholastically. There are huge clamoring's of interest for the county to offer other sports such as Lacrosse, soccer, baseball, Volleyball and football each of them all bringing their own heavy support systems and following that could potentially transfer into equitable, efficient and effective introductions help to uplift all aspects of school innerworkings. And amongst all of the current middle school coaches there is a big vocal backing of and sincere desire to do more, with the right support of course.

For those looking to poke holes in the idea, of course there are many factors the decide if how and when changes like this can happen; but for reference here are a few key points of direct fundamental change potentially to come through increased athletic access and support whether on the school level or administrative level: filling understaffed schools and roles, decrease negative student behaviors, increase in student "school pride/buy in", increase in parental participation/ support, Increase peer/community familiarity, decreased oppositional perspectives, increased student achievement, increased attendance, decrease in suspensions/expulsions, decrease in detrimental incidents etc. I could go on and on breaking down each individually, as well as adding more discussable topics, but the focus should be on the positive progress gained by the children and engaging them where their personal desires and societal requirements meet as we assist and nurture their growth. Athletics asks and requires more from students than is asked of them anywhere else in life, but it is also rooted in having a system of supports and motivational encouragement that softens the blow of enforced accountability. Lets' get the next generation back to physical engagement and learning experientially as they prepare to move forward.

#BaltimoreCountyPublicSchools #MiddleSchool #YouthAthletics #PublicSchoolSupport #ChildrenFirstBudgetLast #YouthFootball #YouthLacrosse #YouthSoccer #YouthBasketball #YouthBaseball #YouthSoftball #YouthVolleyball #YouthTennis