Poston Butte High School
Gordon Ray, Athletic Director
Board Report
September 2013
Highlights
Football:
At the time of this report our varsity team has a record of 3 wins – 2 losses. We have one more game at Mountain View Marana before we have a scheduled bye week. Injuries have taken a toll on the team with a key member lost for the season due to a torn ACL and another starter out an additonal 2 weeks with a severe concussion.
JV has a record of 3 wins and 3 losses and Freshmen have a record of 1 win 5 losses
Brandon Hatfield is currently the 5th leading rusher in Division II football with 611 yards rushing, averaging 122 yards per game and is the number 1 point scorer in Division II averaging 16 points per game for a total of 80 points scored through 5 games.
Golf:
Boys – wrap up their season this week after a busy September. As of this report, no one from the team has qualified for the state tournament.
Girls – like the boys, wrap up their season this week. Numbers were low this year. Kelsee Haws has qualified for the Girl’s State Tournament
Volleyball
Varsity - The varsity currently has a record of 3 wins and 4 losses. The games have proven to be exciting to watch. The most impressive win this year was against Williams Field. After going down 2 games to none, the Lady Broncos stormed back and took the next three games for an exciting come from behind victory.
JV – has a record of 3 wins and 4 losses. The young ladies continue to develop seeking to put together a complete game.
Freshmen – has a record of 3 wins and 4 losses. Like the JV they are searching for more consistency in their play.
Cross Country
In their first meet the boys took 2nd out of 7 teams. Quinn Johnson (a 9th grader) took 2nd over-all out of about 40 girls. Sky Mendes placed 8th out of about 45 boys. The teams continues to improve as they face larger numbers from bigger schools.
Swimming
Despite their low numbers, the swim team continues to show remarkable improvement. Several school record has been broken by Laci Ploense, Bianca Silva, and Travis Fryhover. The move to Division I may prove to be a tough adjustment with qualifying for state.
Athletic Director’s Summary:
Outside of the mixed general success on the athletic fields and courts, what is more impressive is that we are seeing success in the classroom with regard to failing grades.
We have 315 particpants in our fall athletic programs. Of that 315 we have 20 or 6%, who are currently ineligible to participate as of last week’s running of the eligibility report. This number represents an 8% drop from a high 14% (45 athletes ineligible) when we ran our first eligibility report that first week of September. This means that we have reduced the number of student athletes who were failing from 45 to 20 in a just under a four week period.
In my opinion, the reduction in the number of ineligible players is our greatest success to the point. I am very proud of the efforts of our coaches and athletes in striving to obtain better grades.
Yet, despite this success I have noticed an increase in the number of D’s amongst our student athletes. This news tempers my intital enthusiasim as we have a disproportinately high number of D’s. Here are the numbers:
1) 126/315 athletes have at least 1 D = 40%
2) 55/315 athletes have multiple D's = 17%
3) 20/315 athletes are failing at least 1 class = 6%
In other words, 40% of current eligible athletes have at least one D. This information coupled with the increasing NCAA entry level GPA requirement does not bode well for our athletes who wish to compete at the NCAA Division I and II levels.
I have asked my coaches to think of ways in which we can combat the academic lethargy amongst some of our student athletes. We will meet when we return from break to discuss those ideas. I have indicated that we should adopt the “C” rule vs the “D” rule as the measure by which our athletes meet eligibility requirements.
Currently, our girl’s volleyball program works under this very premise. Out of 40 volleyball players only 3 have D’s. On our varsity volleyball program, not a single “D” has been earned. I submit that if we are truly going to impact the lives of our athletes then, the academic expectations must be raised. The message that a D is good enough to play has been received by our students. To me, it is an unacceptably low expectation. We can and must demand better from our kids. ( I have attached to my report the data showing failure rates, D’s, and team GPA averages for the Board’s review.)
Respectfully submitted,
Gordon Ray
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