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Padecky: Carle's sports bias isn't hidden
Published: Thursday, February 11, 2010 at 5:55 p.m.
Last Modified: Thursday, February 11, 2010 at 5:55 p.m.
Bill Carle clearly has a bias and he doesn’t hide it. He has been a San Francisco Giants’ season ticket holder for 20 years. He had two sons play golf and soccer at Santa Rosa High School. One of them, Trevor, was First-Team All-Empire golf in 2006. He said he has made lifelong friends from the parents he met when their sons played Rincon Valley Little League. So Carle has more than a passing acquaintance with sports.
And since he is president of the Santa Rosa City School Board, Carle also has more than a passing interest in the proposed elimination of spring sports in the Santa Rose city schools in the spring of 2011.
“This is not going to happen on my watch,” Carle said of the proposal that would affect five high schools and baseball, softball, golf, tennis, swimming and diving and badminton. “Now whether I can convince at least three other people (voting board members), that remains to be seen.”
Carle’s plea to those on the fence — the proposal will be reviewed late April or early May — has nothing to do with the thrill of victory or the agony of defeat. It has nothing to do with learning how to hit a golf ball properly or slicing the backhand in tennis. Not one high school kid is going to have a transcendent life moment if he learns how to take the outside pitch and hit it to right field.
The true, long-lasting effects of sports rest not in what can be seen but rather what can’t. And that can be the rub, since athletes are seen more often than heard. From a distance, seeing someone hit a baseball or kick a soccer ball can have superficial, almost vapid impact. Where, after all, is the deep meaning in that? It’s beneath the surface, said Carle.
“Fact is, human beings are social creatures,” he said. “We need a sense of community. We are made to be around each other. We are made to have lifelong contact with each other. Nobody can live by themselves.”
“Ted Kaczynski did,” I wisecracked, referring to the Unabomber, the man responsible for mail bombings primarily in the ’80s and ’90s.
“That’s my point!” Carle exclaimed. “Sports is one of the best ways to achieve a sense of community. It brings people together, both the parents and the kids. It’s like going to the GranFondo (Levi Leipheimer’s recreational bike ride).”
In fact, other than maybe going to an airport, sports is the rare gathering point for people of different backgrounds. Meeting and getting to know teammates who come from a different social, economic or educational situations, that’s a melting pot unlike all others, an experience that lends to understanding and wisdom lasting much longer than adolescence.
As if that’s the only benefit playing a sport provides.
“My wife is a nurse and she is seeing a significant rise in childhood obesity and diabetes,” Carle said. “Exercise is a principal way of combating those problems.”
Eliminating sports such as golf, tennis and swimming would send kids to other interactions far less active. With the influx of electronic games, iPhones that can do just about everything except bake a cake, kids are given more options than ever to sit on their butt.
“Our children are becoming increasingly more sedentary,” Carle said. “We got to get them outside, not put them inside. The interesting thing about spring sports, these are the sports that people tend to remain active as adults. Yes, we all love to watch football but not many of us are playing the sport when we are in our 30s or 40s. But tennis, golf, swimming, these are lifelong pursuits.”
As if that’s the only benefit playing a sport provides.
“Some people might argue sports isn’t a curricular activity and I understand that,” Carle said. “But as an extra-curricular activity it often helps kids stay in school who otherwise wouldn’t. And when you stay in school you remain exposed to thoughts and ideas. It helps create pathways to the future. I don’t think you can put a price on that.”
For those with a casual or even no interest in sports, the enterprise can be condemned outright simply by being exposed to the televised broadcasts of pro sports that fill so much of our everyday knowledge and conversation.
“You can’t look at pro sports,” Carle said, “and the bizarre behaviors that are produced by young, immature athletes not knowing how to handle all the fame and all the money. We have to be thinking sports from a teenage perspective.”
Seven adults comprise the school board, charged with many unenviable tasks, chief of which may be to remember what it was like to be a teenager.
“A teenager is still building himself, establishing an identity and a value system,” said Carle, 55. “With good coaching, he can learn how to be a good sport, how to handle defeat, how to treat others. In the right environment sports teaches people how to develop personal relationships. It (spring sports in high school) comes at a time in which teenagers are finding out who they are. What they can do. What they can’t. It’s part of growing up.”
And the most ironic of all things to be gained by growing up is this: The teenagers themselves can take a large credit for making that happen. The mandate has gone out to the five high schools. Turn off the lights. Don’t needlessly burn electricity. “Have the whole school dark on a weekend or a holiday,” Carle said. Saving electricity saves money, about $190,000 Carle is guessing.
Eat more lunches at the school now that the schools are offering healthier lunches, another revenue stream.
“Conserving energy and eating better are two things that will have lifelong implications for them anyway,” Carle said. “These are patterns of behavior they can take into adulthood.”
Ironic indeed, a proposal to eliminate spring sports, so draconian on the surface, surprisingly represents an opportunity for personal growth.
“Out of the ashes,” Carle said, “rises the Phoenix.”
Who didn’t rise without help. He had teammates. They worked together on a common goal. That’s a lot like sports, Bill Carle will tell you. And that’s the best part.
For more on North Bay sports go to Bob Padecky’s blog at padecky.blogs.pressdemocrat.com. You can reach Staff Columnist Bob Padecky at 521-5223 or bob.padecky@pressdemocrat.com.
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