Interscholastic Sports Summit Kicks Off at UMaine
Contact: Kay Hyatt at (207) 581-2761
ORONO, Maine — More than 300 student-athletes, coaches, principals, athletic directors and other schools officials are at the University of Maine today, adding their ideas to a growing compilation of information to guide healthy interscholastic sports programs in Maine. Participants at the Maine Sports Summit represent 85 high schools and 22 middle schools of all sizes and from every area of the state.
The Summit is sponsored by the UMaine Sport and Coaching Education Initiative, Coaching Maine Youth to Success, a federally funded project to develop a national model for quality sports programs that complement state academic learning standards and overall school objectives. The initiative is co-directed by Robert A. Cobb, dean of the UMaine College of Education and Human Development, and J. Duke Albanese, lead policy advisor for the Great Maine Schools Project at the Senator George J. Mitchell Scholarship Research Institute in Portland, and former Maine Commissioner of Education.
Today’s Summit is part of a comprehensive approach to tap the perspective of students and the adults involved in school athletics about the characteristics that make — or prevent — positive, beneficial interscholastic sports programs. Their input will be used by a statewide Select Panel charged with shaping a working philosophical base of core principles and practices for improving interscholastic athletics and supporting effective coaching education.
“We are very happy to have the student turnout and the richness of their input,” said Albanese. “It’s their insight that will help the panel shape its recommendations to the people of Maine.”
Since October, the Select Panel has been working to identify major themes and concerns in interscholastic sports. These themes and issues, which Summit participants will further explore and define throughout the day, include: Sportsmanship, Academics, Opportunity to Play, Quality of Coaching, Role of Parents, and Health and Fitness. During the final session of the Summit, participants will identify promising practices to create a healthier sports environment, as well as practices that are detrimental and should be eliminated.
The initiative co-directors acknowledge the commitment and hard work of the Select Panel over the past six months and the skills of facilitator Richard H. Card in coalescing around the issues and in their systematic approach to the process — shifting through exiting data, examining new knowledge, and gaining various views — to inform their recommendations.
“We know how important sports are to Maine schools and communities,” Albanese says. “This work complements efforts of the state Department of Education and the Mitchell Institute to strengthen the high school experience for students, and we hope it will generate conversations on sports in every community.”
Coaching Maine Youth to Success builds on the pioneering work of the Maine Center for Sport and Coaching in linking interscholastic sports programs to their schools’ educational mission and the Guiding Principles of the Maine Learning Results. That program — Sports, Schools and Learning Results — was piloted at a dozen Maine high schools from 1996-2000 and provided one of the first program assessment models grounded in Maine’s performance-based standards.
Cobb and Albanese, both former scholar-athletes, emphasize that the intent of the summit is not to point fingers at perceived negative practices. Rather, they say, it is about finding out what’s working and having the courage to say that some things aren’t working in the best interest of students and should change.
“What is unique to this process is that it will represent a consensus from across a broad spectrum of individuals who are convinced of the potential value sports hold for young people,” says Cobb.Sports Summit
In earlier interviews with student-athletes and in related UMaine research, young people highlighted the essential role of the coach in making sports all they should be as an important and lasting teaching and learning experience. The initiative is also working to improve the quality of coaching education through the Maine Center for Sport and Coaching at UMaine and to address the growing shortage and high turnover of qualified coaches in the secondary schools. Information from the Summit will be combined with the perspective of coaches regarding the incentives and disincentives to enter and continue coaching.
“Having the full engagement of the UMaine head coaches and Department of Athletics, through Athletics Director Patrick Nero, will add important expertise to our effort, says Cobb. “Combining their insights with other sources should garner broad-based support for the core principles and practices of sports done the right way.”
The Select Panel’s final product, expected this fall, will be a seminal document — broadly disseminated — to help guide healthy sports programs in Maine and around the country, according to Albanese, who spearheads the daily activities of the initiative. “We are confident that their work will be a national model,” he says.
Former Lewiston mayor and state senator John Jenkins, national director of “Inspired 2 B Great” motivational skills training organization, opens the Summit with a keynote address. Following a noon news conference, UMaine varsity coaches Scott Atherley (women’s soccer), Jack Cosgrove (football), Terry Kix (field hockey) , and Tim Whitehead (men’s ice hockey) will present a session and field questions on issues such as key lessons coaches should be teaching, early specialization, and professional development for Maine middle school and high school coaches.