When you think back on your time in high school or college, inevitably some of those memories revolve around an athletic event or events, whether you were an athlete or not.
Maybe you played on the basketball team, were part of the cheerleading squad or went to two Friday night football games your junior year.
Maybe you dated a girl on the field hockey team or your best friend dated a baseball player.
We would argue that in small communities, such as those in Central Pennsylvania, it is impossible to get through high school without having had your time there impacted in one way or another by scholastic sports.
That’s why we were a little shocked at comments aired at a recent school board meeting in which a district resident questioned money dedicated to scholastic sports.
Scholastic athletes benefit from their time in uniform in so many ways. Student athletes learn early to balance their time and energy thanks to athletics. Time management is arguably the most valued skill a collegian brings with them when they step foot on a post-secondary campus.
Sports and other extracurricular activities teach students valuable lessons in time management.
Team work and camaraderie are developed through participating in scholastic sports. Bonds that last a lifetime are created on the field of play. Teammates learn to rely on one another, develop trust in one another and work as a unit to achieve an overall goal.
Teams learn to win and lose together. Athletes learn to manage their emotions across a broad range of settings. Athletes learn to manage their pride after a big victory and deal with the heartbreak that goes with losing a big game.
Athletics give young people confidence, instill discipline and provide entire communities a rallying point.
Imagining the high school experience without sports is like imagining English class without words.
High school sports are a source of pride for communities large and small. It is in the small communities, such as those we live in here, that people rally in droves around their neighborhood schools.
Once freshmen step foot onto the high school campus for the first time they become Green Dragons, Wildcats, Defenders or Black Panthers. Yearbooks are often adorned with the mascots of their school. Without sports, there would be little need for the mascots.
The first week of school has nearly everyone buzzing about the new football season, the soccer team and whether or not the field hockey squad will challenge for a league title this season.
Then there are the individual student athletes.
Our sports page today has a feature story on Milton valedictorian Gerry Runyan, a student athlete who has excelled in both the classroom and on the field of competition, where he was a four-year standout on the baseball team and became one of the football team’s most valuable players last fall.
Runyan is taking his talents to Bucknell University where he will major in chemistry this fall in the hopes of becoming a doctor one day.
How might his college application look to one of the nation’s elite liberal arts institutions without his achievements on the field of play? It would have seemed rather thin, especially to a university — not unlike universities across the globe — that places a strong emphasis on extracurricular activities.
There’s a student athlete across the river in Lewisburg that excelled in soccer, basketball, cross country and track and field.
This fall, Casey Miller will be attending Illinois University thanks to her running talents. Without scholastic sports, she likely would have never even visited the Champagne, Ill. campus. Now she will enjoy the Big Ten experience thanks to her hard work on and off the track.
Mifflinburg High graduate Dustin Manotti was a four-time wrestling All-American at Cornell University, an Ivy League school. Warrior Run graduate Erin Fisher was a three-time track and cross country All-American at Elizabethtown College and earned a post-graduate NCAA scholarship.
This list can go on forever, but we think you get the point.
Scholastic athletics is more than just a ball, a bat or a uniform. Athletics provide opportunities for young people, opportunities that may otherwise have never been there.
Athletics build strong minds, strong bodies and strong communities.
It’s hard to say it any better than the NCAA did through a number of ads it ran during a recent campaign featuring athletes playing various sports, then speaking as firemen, doctors, teachers and other professionals.
One such spot ended with, “There are 380,000 NCAA student athletes and most of us will go pro in something other than sports.”
You don’t have to have been a professional athlete — or an athlete at all — to have been impacted by athletics.

chris brady: 570-742-9671
sports@standard-journal.com