In recent years Manitou Springs High School has been facing a decline in athletics due to lower student body participation, athletes choosing club sports over high school sports and more coaches resigning from their positions.
This hasn’t just been an issue for MSHS however. Data from the National Survey of Children’s Health(NSCH) found that only 53.8% children ages 6 to 17 years old play on a sports team. This is down from the 58.4% of children that played sports in 2017.
The data from NSCH also found that during and following the COVID-19 pandemic, many children did not have access to sports, causing high school sports participation to fall below 50% for the first time in the 21st century during the 2021 school year.
MSHS has also seen this impact, like other schools, according to former football offensive coordinator and head baseball coach Brandon DeMatto. “I think COVID has impacted athletics all across the nation. So I’m not going to say that’s not an issue for us, but I know it’s an issue that everybody’s facing,” DeMatto said.
MSHS teacher, former head volleyball coach, and current head girls basketball coach, Gabby Santos, has also seen the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on athletics at MSHS. “I started in the district as a COVID tracer, and I’m wondering what the impact of a year and a half of not really having access to middle school sports, rec sports and club sports has had. We took this time away from playing anything, notjust basketball, not just volleyball, not just soccer,” Santos said. “We had a lot of people that just stopped playing completely in those two years. And when we stop anything, it’s hard to start again.”
Former athlete, Tori Greene (12) has seen how the break from sports because of COVID has affected athletics. “I think COVID drove a lot of people out of sports because kids got used to not doing anything and it kind of created a lazy effect. And I think it’s just hard,” Greene said. “It was such a big gap year for us as seniors to miss out. It was our eighth grade to freshman year which is kind of like a big maturity year for us, and it was just a big jump that we missed. And for some kids, they just couldn’t get back into it.”
Although the pandemic has affected athletics in recent years, Santos is seeing participation come back up again in the freshman and sophomore classes. “When you don’t play for a while and you take time off, high school sports are long seasons and it’s a big commitment. I think this year, especially with the increase in freshmen, and even the sophomore class, who are still on the smaller side, we just have numbers again,” Santos said. “We have these folks who played middle school sports because they weren’t as impacted by COVID, and we’re seeing the numbers come back in a way that is going to change athletics.”
Although there has been low participation due to COVID, MSHS, like other schools nationwide, is also facing lower enrollment. The school previously held about 500 students and is now down to about 390 students. “I think one of the big factors is that our enrollment is down and to some degree, when you get to the high school world parents shop for their kids to find the best school to go to, based on the interests of their kids,” DeMatto said. “I think in the long run, athletically, maybe Manitou isn’t at the height of a lot of people’s lists, because I think we’re probably a little more well known for arts and some of those things.”
Not only are enrollment numbers affecting participation in high school athletics, but the sports culture as a whole is changing for multiple reasons, one being club sports. “There’s been this push to specialize, and I think one of the biggest and probably most significant aspects to that is sports used to be team. Sports used to be meant to teach kids how to be about something more than just themselves and to push for a goal that’s bigger than just them,” DeMatto said. “Now, with club sports and the culture of outside methods of playing, a lot of it is more centered towards the individual kid. It’s kind of a showcase mentality and we’ve lost a lot of that understanding of what the team aspect is.”
MSHS Athletic Director, Cameron Jones, has also seen the effect that club sports have on high school athletics. “I think high school sports competing with the club world is a growing issue too, where you know kids are actually having their club teams be the priority. And now it’s like, they’ll do school if they have time. It’s hard to coach that way anymore where you’re trying to put a team together and you have maybe your best athletes that have one foot in and one foot out,” Jones said. “And that club culture of sports is really impacting high school.”
While club sports are beginning to compete with high school athletics for participation, Greene, who played club basketball for 5 years think’s there is a good way to use club sports to one’s advantage. “Club was just me getting more touches on the ball and it was just more time to practice the sport, which just grew the whole experience,” Greene said. “Club allowed me to experience basketball with a group of people that I didn’t go to school with, which just expanded my variety of the game and I got to play in a different way.”
With the competition of club sports, DeMatto thinks that athletes building pride in playing at MSHS will help to rebuild the sports culture. “The biggest component that I see is developing a pride for where you play and really getting back to that mentality that we play for the name on the front, not necessarily the name on the back,” DeMatto said. “I think when you are prideful in who you play for you’re suddenly in a position where kids can buy into the idea that this is a lot bigger than me, but I think it’s a difficult challenge.”
Although club sports have impacted high school athletics, Santos is seeing the community start to come back together in support of school sports and how that can positively impact the sports culture. “I think that we’re growing and things like the Hoops and Hype Night and things like basketball’s Santa Camp and Breakfast are pulling the community into Manitou sports again,” Santos said. “I think that we have coaches invested in things like the little league baseball and bringing back those youth camps which has a lot of opportunity for us to come back to those things that really make these small community sports mean something to everybody.”
