The Coaching Maine Youth to Success program takes place today in Orono.
By Kevin Mills
Staff Writer

This goaltender wasn’t talking about stopping shots or cutting down the angles.

The chaos around him wasn’t on the ice or on the soccer field. It was part of his own hectic lifestyle.

As members of the panel for Coaching Maine Youth to Success listened to this young hockey player describe his schedule, and how he pondered his ability to cope with it, the panel could see the purpose behind its work.

“As he was describing this incredible schedule, you begin to wonder,” said J. Duke Albanese, former Commissioner of Education and current co-director for the University of Maine’s Coaching and Sport Education Initiative. “He’s a high school goalie, and he’s a goalie on one of those elite travel soccer teams. Soccer season was behind him, but he’s still playing. He said ‘This Thursday, I’ve got a game at 10 p.m. as goalie of the soccer team, and then I have a high school hockey game the next day.’ Plus he’s tackling a very extended academic program.”

Interscholastic sports has reached a point of concern. Athletes are pulled in various directions, getting burned out and losing the enjoyment in the experience. Coaches are stressed, challenged and driven out of jobs like never before. Parents are losing perspective and getting too emotionally involved. School administrators are struggling to curb the out-of-control nature of high school and middle school sports.

It has reached what many consider a critical state, where high school sports aren’t about what they used to be.

“Sports are great, and we see all the good sides, but we need some midcourse correction here,” said Albanese. “We need to revisit some of these things. Are we losing the aims of what public schools are like and that integrated notion that sports are part of the experience and go with the academic side? And what are we going to do about it.”

That’s what Coaching Maine Youth to Success is trying to determine. With a congressional allocation funding it, this project is a professional development and public awareness initiative to create a model on sports programs that align with the Guiding Principles of the Maine Learning Results. With support from the Maine Center for Sport and Coaching Education, National Center for Student Aspirations, the Center for Research and Evaluation at the University of Maine and the Maine Principals’ Association, this initiative is designed to help determine what Maine interscholastic sports programs should be.

“We just want to see, as Duke is fond of saying, ‘Sports done right,'” said Robert Cobb, dean of the College of Education and Human Development at UMaine and co-director of this project. “That’s what this effort is all about.”

A select panel of principals, athletic directors, educators, MPA members and coaches, have joined forces to determine a proper model for interscholastic sports.

“What would be the core principles and core practices that if followed would be healthy sports?” said Albanese. “Without a description of what it looks like, sometimes it’s hard to get there.”

So the panel is listening, asking questions and researching to find the proper focus for interscholastic sports. Tuesday’s Maine Sports Summit in Orono will be part of that process. More than 200 student-athletes, coaches and administrators from Maine high schools and middle schools will attend and offer what Albanese describes as “the good, the bad and the ugly” in their experiences.

“We are determined to get the voice of Maine high school student-athletes,” said Albanese. “If they had their say, what would it look like?”

Former Lewiston Mayor John Jenkins will be the keynote speaker before small group sessions provide students and administrators the opportunity to share experiences and concerns.

Since October, the initiative has met with students and athletic directors to help identify major themes and concerns. They bring some of those findings into the Summit’s workshops in hopes of discovering better ways to make athletic experiences more enjoyable and beneficial.

The goal is to produce a model in the fall that could help set a standard for all to follow. Albanese says the findings could have major ramifications. If school boards adopt the recommendations, it could have far-reaching effects from youth sports to the community, parental involvement to professional development for coaches. It creates a roadmap for sports programs to follow.

“As long as they’re conducting the programs in accordance with these core practices and principals, then they’re going to have support when they are confronted by parents who’d like to see things more responsive to their particular kids’ needs,” said Cobb. “They’re going to have a basis to turn to.”

In the past, there has been no study or analysis to set a standard for how programs operate. While schools have tried to adopt various policies, conflicts continue to arise.

“We need to be able to say what the experts think about this, and there’s nobody out there that has taken an authoritative stand,” said Cobb.

The hope is that this endeavor creates a more positive and enjoyable environment, allows athletics to be part of the educational experience, creates more emphasis on teaching and learning, provides better understanding and perspective from parents, improves training for coaches and encourages positive participation from everyone. Simply put, they want to expand what works in interscholastic sports and eliminate what doesn’t.

“Sports when it’s done well and it’s in the right perspective, a lot of good comes from that in a lot of places,” said Albanese. “People that don’t have children in school anymore or grandchildren in school anymore, what do they see? They see the music and the sports programs. It’s a good source of pride for the community. That’s a good thing. How do we make sure that is part that persists and survives?”

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