By Michael Coughlin Jr.
Frank Shea, Director of Athletics and Physical Education, joined last week’s School Committee regular meeting, revealing troubling trends regarding participation in the district’s athletic programs.
“I believe we may be at a crossroads, being an urban district at this point, and sports aren’t what they used to be years ago,” said Shea.
He noted that the district is losing sub-varsity programs because of a lack of participation. These programs include junior varsity softball, baseball, boys’ and girls’ lacrosse, and field hockey.
Shea attributed the lack of participation to several factors, including private schools like Malden Catholic and St. Mary’s seeking athletes, students attending vocational schools, and the need to compete with Revere’s strong JROTC and robotics programs.
He also added, “we have many students who are needed at home for family support to work other jobs or just do not have interest in sports.”
Revere offers 27 of the 31 Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association (MIAA) sports programs. Still, only 36% of students participate, and this number decreases to 25% when excluding indoor and outdoor track, which are popular programs.
“I didn’t even want to do the numbers if we put soccer in there as well,” said Shea. “We are trying to do a lot of programs with less participants,” he added, noting that neighboring suburban communities have participation rates closer to 70% and 80%.
Shea then presented a table that depicted the sports programs offered this spring by schools in the Greater Boston League. Specifically, multiple schools in the league either have gaps in their offerings or must co-op them.
“It’s hitting everybody. It’s hitting all our teams in our league and in the urban areas,” said Shea.
Athletics in the area have reached a point where Shea has indicated that there has been talk of Lynn Classical and Lynn English, who have a long-standing Thanksgiving football tradition, possibly having to co-op in the sport.
Moving forward, Shea discussed some next steps that he considered important. Specifically, he discussed promoting sports opportunities at the middle school more aggressively, encouraging coaches to run summer or weekend clinics, among other initiatives.
Shea then walked through the sports participation data, which compares the number of participants in specific sports programs over the last four school years.
To view these numbers, visit https://reverema.iqm2.com/Citizens/Calendar.aspx and open the April 15th School Committee Regular Meeting agenda packet and skip to page 38.
Eventually, Shea outlined possible next steps and cost-cutting measures if these trends were to continue. Some of these measures include eliminating assistant stipends, eliminating sub-varsity positions if programs are not offered, and more.
A complete list of possible next steps can be found in the agenda packet mentioned earlier, on page 41. Following Shea’s presentation, the committee and superintendent weighed in.
Superintendent Dianne Kelly acknowledged the importance of athletics for a certain percentage of students and thought it prudent to evaluate whether funded programs align with the interests of the student population.
Aisha Milbury-Ellis said she was deflated hearing the presentation and hoped that defeat was not being accepted.
“My hope is that we do make the effort to provide more exposure to the middle school kids, to the high school kids as they’re coming in, like during orientation, getting the information out there,” she said.
“I just hope we make that effort at least to try to do everything that we possibly can, and then in the end if it’s just not there, it’s not there.”
Following the remarks from Milbury-Ellis, Shea emphasized that he did not want to come across as “doom and gloom,” implying that other schools have it worse, but he noted the current trend.
Additionally, both Milbury-Ellis and John Kingston believed that incorporating sports such as lacrosse and field hockey into the middle school physical education curriculum was a good idea.
Furthermore, while Kingston agreed with some of the aforementioned possible next steps and cost-cutting measures, he was not convinced by others.
“I’m not sure about cutting the freshman coach or the JV baseball or JV softball coach. I mean, the problem I think is if this trend reverses itself a little bit, you’re going to be looking for coaches, and sometimes they’re hard to find,” he said.
Kingston also believed that having more coaches was beneficial and that cutting positions like these would not result in significant savings.
Later, Frederick Sannella also commented and agreed that cutting coaching positions would yield minimal returns, and thought that introducing kids in middle school to athletics was a good idea.
Anthony Caggiano suggested having afternoon programs for younger kids that incorporate athletics.
Finally, Jacqueline Monterroso inquired about one of the possible next steps, which would be to have a minimum number of participants for a program to run. She wondered if the idea were to be instituted, whether a program that did not meet the minimum would be totally shut down, or if it would be offered the following season.
In response, Shea indicated he would not want to shut down a program and that the door for programs would always be left open.
“I would never want to just shut something down. What history shows is once you shut something down, it’s very difficult to build it back up,” he said.
If you would like to view this presentation and the discussion that followed, visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45Kl0_aaNSw&t=5762s and skip to 45:50.
