On Monday, January 26, the Interscholastic Management of the Maine Principals’ Association voted to reduce the number of playoff teams that will qualify for its tournaments and playoffs. Unfortunately, the committee rejected most other proposed cuts.

The vote got me thinking about a few things. The first thing that popped into my head was, “It’s about time they decided to cut something in sports.” After all, in the past 5-10 years, few schools have cut anything in sports. It’s always been the less popular co-curriculars feeling the budget crunch. So, why haven’t we cut anything in sports?

As a freshman at Poland Regional High School, I have noticed that when it comes to budget cuts, sports always appears to be the last to be cut. In fact, most of the time, athletic dollars never seem to get cut from the budget! Co-curriculars like speech and debate or the drama department have funding reduced. Even classroom education sees reduction before sports. Come on, we go to school to learn. If schools feel the need to cut education before sports, then there is a problem and that problem needs to be fixed. As much as I support my high school sports teams and sports in general, I feel that other co-curriculars don’t necessarily get financially supported the way sports teams do.

Sure, without sports, a lot of students’ high school experiences would be very limited. For some students, sports motivate them. Some students from high school go to college on a sports scholarship. For some students, sports are their life and they can’t live without playing them. On the other hand, we have kids who are not as athletic and interested as the kids who do play sports. Sometimes, those kids who are not interested in playing sports have trouble finding a co-curricular activity to participate in. Most schools say that they offer a lot of co-curriculars for students to participate in, that there is a co-curricular for everyone. A number of schools make students participate in a certain number of co-curriculars as a graduating requirement. But, how are students who don’t play sports supposed to join a co-curricular when everything is being cut?

I love sports. I enjoy writing about and following sports (otherwise, I probably wouldn’t have this column). But, I don’t think it is fair at all that sports are protected the way they are while education and other co-curricular activities get cut. Not cutting sports while cutting educational programs, teachers and other co-curriculars is depriving students of opportunities beyond athletics.