Making the grade

High school sports is synonymous with pressure situations: the green quarterback throwing a “Hail Mary” pass; the inexperienced goalie staring down a hulking forward on a breakaway; the basketball team celebrating after draining a buzzer-beater before the long bus ride home.
The pressure facing more high school athletes than any highlight-reel moment, though, is the need to succeed in classes as well as on the team.
There’s no time where that precarious balance is more obvious than during exams, when students take a week off from regular classes—and sports—to write final exams to cap the first semester.
That means someone like Greg Ste. Croix, who coaches the so far undefeated Muskie junior boys’ basketball team, won’t see his players for a long stretch, save for maybe a few optional practices.
He said that’s just fine by him.
“The people we coach are student athletes, which is stressed from day one, when we have tryouts to the last day,” he noted. “They are student athletes, which means their subjects, their classes . . . their whole reason for being here is to get an education.
“From there, they become athletes,” Ste. Croix added.
Much is made of the busy lives of modern youths, juggling ever-increasing piles of schoolwork and a part-time job alongside their personal lives.
Things can be even more difficult to strike the right balance when a high school student throws a handful of practices, a couple of games a week, and a variety of other obligations to the team into the mix.
“It’s easy for me to find that balance,” Ste. Croix countered. “School first.”
Fort High recently revised its athletic program requirements for the second semester resuming this week, stating explicitly that “athletes will maintain passing grades [a 50 or higher] in all of their courses . . . no Muskie athlete will represent Fort Frances High School in interschool competition unless they are passing all of their courses.”
Counter to the popular image of the “dumb jock,” Fort High principal Gord McCabe said a number of studies have been conducted over the years examining the grades of athletes in the school community, and “it always, always exceeds the general performance of the student population.”
Even among the Muskie boys’ hockey team, which endures a long season of weekend tournaments and exhibition games along with a substantial league schedule, the majority are performing off-ice, said head coach Shane Bliss.
“You could probably cut [the hockey team] into three groups. A third of the team that’s on the honour roll, a third of the team that’s a C-level student, and a third of the team that’s maybe struggling,” he remarked.
In his half-dozen years behind the Muskie bench, Bliss estimated there have been “maybe two or three incidences” in which grades were a serious enough problem to warrant removal from the team, but that relatively clean record didn’t happen by accident, he stressed.
“That’s always a factor when we pick our hockey team. We have to pick players who can balance classes and hockey,” Bliss explained. “Every year at tryouts, there’s kids that I know have the talent to play on the hockey team [but] at the same time, I know their history in school.”
Ste. Croix said the clear majority of his players who fall behind in academics get back on track just from learning they’re in danger of academic ineligibility.
“For a good many people in the school, whether it’s athletics or drama or the band, their sole reason—they don’t think about it like this, but their sole reason for coming to school—is for that,” he said.
“If someone comes to them and says, ‘Your sole reason is going to be taken away,’ what do you do? Do you make the change? I think you do.”
It’s usually a problem of one’s priorities rather than their aptitude, Ste. Croix added.
“For most of them and most students, they’re very capable of doing the work, they just don’t hand it in,” he noted. “When you bring a student aside and say, ‘Look, I talked to your math teacher and you’re missing assignments three, four and five. Your mark has dropped significantly,’ most of the time what I get from them is, ‘Oh, it’s in my binder!’”
Bliss agreed. “It’s never about a lack of academic ability. It’s a lack of effort.”
While he knows cracking a couple of books on the bus home from a win isn’t ideal, Bliss said playing hockey is a very positive thing academically for a lot of players, including himself.
“Personally, it helped me a lot with my schooling,” he said, remembering his own Muskie days. Spending so much time practising and playing with the team meant when he was away from the rink, he had to stay on task and study hard.
“I knew I didn’t have a lot of time . . . it helped me a lot,” he added. “Hopefully it helps these boys, too.”
It’s also a pretty effective carrot to dangle in front of a student who might otherwise drop out, Ste. Croix said.
“For some kids, going to class alone is not enough. They need something else to motivate them,” he stressed.
For the majority, though, that kind of motivation isn’t necessary—and many players are as self-motivated in uniform as they are out.
“I had a student this week where we had a game on [last] Tuesday and they weren’t able to play in that because they’re preparing for an exam,” Ste. Croix said.
He still held a couple of optional practices over the break, hoping time with the team would help, rather than hinder, their exam week. “A great stress release is exercise if they can handle an hour-and-a-half or an hour away from studying,” Ste. Croix reasoned.
Some players manage to thrive under the stress of a full workload in school and an important role on a school team, Bliss said, which is impressive to say the least.
“Mike McCaig is probably one of our leaders in that regard,” he said, naming the stalwart defenceman as just one of the students to immediately pop into his head.
“He’s a great student, he logs a lot of ice time, and I think he hasn’t missed a game this year. He’s an excellent example, he’s got a lot of tough courses, as well.”
He knows it can be a struggle for many, but there’s a lot to learn from hockey—and dedicating oneself to a role with the team even with a lot on one’s plate builds character.
“That just shows you got your head on your shoulders properly,” he said.
But that shouldn’t get in the way of school, he stressed.
“You sound so much like a teacher, but education is the most important thing,” Bliss laughed. “Not a whole lot of them are going to be going on and making their life out of [athletics].
“How many people in Fort Frances have gone on in hockey? . . . It’s a pretty small percentage, right? So, you’re going to need that Grade 12, and probably a heck of a lot more than that Grade 12.”
“That’s one of the responsibilities of being a teacher and a teacher coach,” agreed Ste. Croix. “You would think any coach, even a coach in the community, would say, ‘You’re 15 years old, 16 years old. School has to be the first thing on your mind.’”