Poor schools

Special report: Longest odds
Rich win, poor lose in high school sports
By Phillip Reese and Tim Casey - Bee Staff Writers
Last Updated 12:24 am PDT Saturday, March 24, 2007
Story appeared in MAIN NEWS section, Page A1
Winning, the losers are told, is not what matters. Sports are just for fun, after all. Losing builds character and discipline. It teaches you to deal with adversity.
Those words are like mantras at the region's lowest socioeconomic schools -- where statistics show athletes face the longest odds of winning -- their repetition increasing as the losses pile up.
They contradict the common view of sports as the great equalizer. And they offer little solace to the Highlands High Scots late in the fall s****r season, as the boys team loses 3-0 to another of the worst teams in the region.
The North Highlands school is among the region's poorest -- those with more than 40 percent of their students qualifying for a government lunch subsidy. The s****r team doesn't even have matching uniforms.
On this day, team members don't seem to be having much fun at all. Nobody smiles or laughs when the ball skips between their goalie's legs, putting them further down the hole. They don't seem to be enjoying themselves at halftime as assistant coach Dan Sisneros calls their performance "pathetic" and says he has "better things to do."
At the end of the game, they walk away downtrodden, losers again. They'll fail to score a goal in more than half their games through the fall season and win only once, underlining an unwritten rule of high school athletics: The rich win; the poor lose. A harsh truth for anyone, but especially for teenagers.
"We've really perpetuated this idea that sports can be a way to climb out of an economic hole," said Maureen Smith, who teaches sports sociology at California State University, Sacramento. "Maybe (winning) has much more meaning ... because of that idea that this is your way out."
In the last school year, poorer local high schools lost more than two of every three games they played against wealthier public and private schools, according to a Bee data analysis of more than 12,000 games played by more than 20,000 athletes from about 180 schools in the Sac-Joaquin Section of the California Interscholastic Federation, stretching from Nevada County to Merced.
The 45 poorest public schools, which educate a third of those students, were less than half as likely to win major division championships as the 44 wealthiest public schools.
It's true not just for s****r, but for all the major sports: volleyball, football, baseball, softball and basketball. Throw in traditional club-type sports such as water polo, tennis, golf and swimming -- where a competitive edge often comes through private training -- and the odds stack up even higher.
Though the discrepancy can be blamed on many factors, experts and officials say, it mostly comes down to this for the players themselves: Grow up in a poor area and you're unlikely to have the infrastructure and support needed to reach your full potential. You are set up to lose.
You probably don't play on an expensive club team outside of school, like many of your opponents. Your mom can't afford the $150 monthly membership at the private strength-training club the guy lined up against you has joined. Like a lot of poorer kids, you may have a weight problem holding you back. Your coach doesn't have a big staff like his peers at the wealthier school; in fact, your coach might take the first opportunity to leave for a winning team. You might not have the minimum grades required to play or you may just not be motivated to go out for a team with a history of losing.
And there's a real chance you've never hit a forehand winner, tried the breaststroke, learned the offsides rule in s****r or visited a driving range.
According to the Highlands Scots' head coach, Eddie Rios, his team members are drawing a devastating conclusion from their repeated losses. It's a lesson, he says, that permeates the school: We're not supposed to win.
"They settle for second-best," Rios said, "because they can't see themselves as winners."
A losing attitude spreads
Losing becomes a habit. At Highlands last year, the Scots lost 106 of their 149 games in the major sports -- almost three in four.
It's a familiar story at a majority of the area's poorest schools. When your school expects you to lose, when you expect to lose, guess what happens?
"It's frustrating when we don't have confidence in a lot of matches," said Patricia DeMille, a senior on the Valley High volleyball team, which went 4-12 in the fall. "When we get down, we stay down. We don't know how to pick ourselves up again."
Kids who would be heroes at winning schools like Grass Valley's Nevada Union or Roseville say they sometimes find themselves treated with indifference at their own poorer schools.
"It's supportive only if you are winning," said Robert Rogers, a Florin senior and one of the region's best wide receivers. "If you are not winning, a lot of people don't want to come (to the games)."
All of this Rios, the Highlands coach, already knows. But he knows something else, too: The teams that beat him, with their fit, club-trained players and full rosters, come from schools that don't likely have more raw talent. If not for economic hardship, he says, his team would win.
"There is a tradition of good athletes" at Highlands, he adds, "just not good teams."
Rios' team members seem surprised when things go their way. They follow good plays with a blunder: a great pass, then a missed goal.
During one game, a Highlands player ran down a rival and stole the ball. Assistant coach Sisneros shouted praise. "Nice, nice. That's the way to cover," he said.
The player passed the ball off quickly, too -- to an opponent.
Poor grades derail promise
No one has to tell the athletes at Sacramento's Hiram Johnson High they don't have the same advantages as some of their opponents. They are reminded of it nearly every week -- in major sports, they lost 36 of last year's 40 matchups with wealthy schools.
Yet early in the fall season, the Warriors' football team members let themselves hope as they prepared for their homecoming game against another poor team. A victory could point them toward the playoffs.
That morning, class was let out for a pep rally -- the first in at least five years. In the gym, Coach Jack Garceau announced players' names. They stepped forward to cheers.
Later, a procession led the team to the stadium: first, a horse ridden by former student Amanda Rodriguez, dressed in an Indian outfit; then a cheerleading squad and 10-student band.
Finally came the players, screaming through their face masks: "Let's do this. Let's go, baby. C'mon. Our field, baby. Our house."
With two wins under their belt, Johnson already had matched or beaten its victory total for each of the last four seasons. The crowd had grown along with the team's improvement.
During last year's games "we could hear crickets, it was so quiet," said running back Houston Roots. "We're building now. It's coming along."
For homecoming, though, something would literally be missing. Some of the best players would be not on the field, but in the stands; some had dropped out of school entirely. Eligibility for high school sports requires a C average, according to section rules, and many potential players couldn't hack it.
Poor grades force coaches at the less well-off schools to turn away up to half of those who try out, they say. About half of Johnson's students tested below a basic knowledge level on the state's standardized language arts test, for instance -- a showing far short of state average. Students who lack such skills are prime candidates to flunk class.
"We have kids walking the halls who could be studs on the field but their grades aren't there," said John Fleming, the Johnson athletic director.
So, with just a few more players than positions, the Johnson Warriors took the field against the Burbank Titans. That was when their grand hopes of winning began to die.
Burbank scored touchdowns on its first four possessions. Johnson couldn't move the ball on offense. On the sidelines, the Warriors tried to remain motivated. Curtis Dao, a junior, was the most animated. "We don't have to sleep out there, kid," he urged, as Burbank went ahead 14-0.
By halftime, the Titans were up 27-0. The Warriors were distraught.
As the players tried to regroup, the student body staged a halftime parade. Six pickup trucks and a stretch limousine filled with students circled the dirt track surrounding the football field.
The festive mood, already dampened by the score, soon turned ugly. Late in the third quarter, with Johnson trailing 41-0, a fight broke out near the concession stands. Over the loudspeakers came an ominous message: "Please exit immediately. No fans are allowed to watch the rest of the game.”
While school officials and police escorted fans to the parking lot, the game resumed. In the fourth quarter, Johnson finally scored a touchdown.
But by then, no one was left to cheer.
Revolving door of coaches
Empty stands are a familiar sight for Brian Mitchell, who coaches one of the worst teams in the region.
Going into the fall season, the Encina High girls volleyball team in the Arden area had not won a single set for three years, let alone a match -- 120 straight losing sets. It won a few sets this year, but still not a match.
Mitchell, the school's athletic director, is passionate about his athletes, but he admits he knows little about volleyball. Without Mitchell, there would be no team, however; he was the only one willing to coach. He tried to make up for shortcomings by watching volleyball training films and asking a former student player to give clinics.
"I've been doing all kinds of stuff," said Mitchell, who also coaches boys basketball and track.
Poorer schools have trouble attracting and keeping good coaches. And, at the high school level, consistent coaching can make a real difference.
"A coach that has been there a long time is able to tell the junior high coaches, the freshman coaches, the JV coaches, what kind of plays they are going to run and the system they are going to run," said Pete Schroeder, a sports sociology instructor at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Each year, the Sac-Joaquin athletic section names several model coaches -- typically rewarding veterans with a history at one school. Only five of the 38 model coaches named during the past six years came from the poorer schools.
Coaches tend to give up after a year or two of losing, Schroeder said. The rare ones who succeed at a poorer school, he added, often leave for stronger programs at wealthier schools.
Mike Dimino led the Hiram Johnson Warriors football team to some of its most successful seasons six years ago. He is now at Del Campo, one of the wealthier schools in the region, and leading them to winning seasons.
Though Dimino said he left Johnson for other reasons, he acknowledges that it's easier to raise funds at Del Campo and he doesn't have to cut as many kids for poor grades.
"The academics here," he said, "without a doubt there is a stronger support system and everything."
A disparity in athlete fitness
It would be easier for coach Mitchell to do his job if all the Encina volleyball players showed up for the first practice ready to dive for a save and run down a chip shot. But, just as bad grades shrink the pool of potential athletes, so does poor fitness.
When Mitchell's girls face off against a wealthier team, they're clearly in worse shape -- some are overweight, and jumps above the net for a big spike are rare.
Students at the 15 least successful athletic programs in the region are more than twice as likely to be in poor shape -- failing at least half of the state's six physical fitness standards -- as students at the 15 most successful programs in the region, The Bee's analysis of state data found.
At the most successful schools, about 1 in 7 ninth-graders are out of shape; at the worst, that distinction affects roughly 1 in 3. That's the situation at Florin High, a poor school in south Sacramento, where last year a third of ninth-graders failed at least half of the fitness standards.
The results were on display this fall when Florin's football team faced off against Jesuit High. The Jesuit guys were big. Eight of their 10 leading tacklers weighed more than 200 pounds -- mostly muscle, not fat. On the Florin side, only three of the team's 10 leading tacklers topped 200 pounds.
The Florin Panthers lost 31-14; in their previous five football games against Jesuit, Florin had been outscored 202 to 69.
"They're obviously a lot bigger and play physical," Florin coach Mike Morales said after the game. "We were trying to get them with speed, but they're fast, too."
For the past year, Morales has tried to bulk up his players. But he gets them for only about 45 minutes a day at the end of school. They train in a 500-square-foot weight room with a lot of old equipment. In the fall and winter, Morales packs in 50 or so kids.
Morales, in his second year as coach, says he cannot always give them the individual attention they need.
"It's still developing," Morales said. "It's hard to watch 50 or 60 guys when you've got one or two coaches."
Wealthier schools tend to have more coaches available at more times. At Nevada Union, for example, the football program alone has 26 coaches for three teams.
In addition, better-off kids get private strength workouts at places like Sports Specific Training in Rocklin. Run by ex-high school football coach Steve Kenyon and former San Francisco 49ers linebacker Dan Bunz, training at SST starts at $129 a month and draws kids as young as 12.
"Our talent pool is ... the kid who aspires to be an elite athlete and they have the parental support and financial backing," Kenyon said. "A lot of kids in lower socioeconomic areas would love to train at places like here. But they can't."
Thin budgets, decrepit facilities
Florin's home football games aren't even at home, thanks to substandard facilities. The same is true at Encina, where fans must drive about four miles -- a 15-minute trek on a busy Friday night -- to El Camino High to watch their team play.
Encina's football field is torn up. There are no large bleachers, no scoreboard. The school doesn't have a pool, either. And a huge crack runs through the tennis courts, rendering them largely useless.
Football fields, pools, courts -- all cost money, and the poorer schools don't have much of it.
Though their schools' base state budgets are about the same, poorer schools tend to have demands on their resources that trump athletics. How can Encina justify spending a lot on sports teams when 53 percent of 10th-graders test below basic levels on benchmark English exams -- almost twice as bad as the state average?
The programs' small budgets also reflect a lack of money in the surrounding community.
A school like Nevada Union will draw thousands of paying spectators to each of its home football games. And the football team's booster club raised an additional $250,000 during fiscal 2005 -- a huge figure for a local program.
At Oak Ridge High in El Dorado Hills, each sport's official budget is only a portion of the money they spend. For all sports, the school receives between $75,000 and $100,000 from boosters each year, estimates athletic director Steve White, atop the district's contribution of $95,000 for program costs and about $75,000 for coaching salaries.
"Being a poor school means not having the best equipment, the best facilities, not having coaches stick around as long, uniforms," said sociologist Smith. "It's about social class."
The resulting losses, Smith said, are "evidence about how class really plays out."