John Dewey High School offers a wide variety of sports for students to participate in, but some of the sports that other schools offer, such as Boys Volleyball, Baseball, and Football- Dewey doesn’t have. This has left prospective student athletes wondering why JDHS doesn’t offer these sports teams. Several coaches, current school athletes, and others who are interested in sports weighed in on this dilemma, and what could possibly be done to bring those sports to JDHS.
One of the many possible issues which might be the reason for the lack of sports offered is that student interest is not strong enough to justify bringing those sports to our school. Unfortunately, for the students actually interested in the sports John Dewey doesn’t currently offer, if not enough people are willing to join, the sport won’t be able to exist.
One of the students interested in joining the Boys Volleyball team is Dilshodjon Aminov, a senior in John Dewey. He states, “I started playing volleyball about 6 years ago and I was on the Youth National Team of Uzbekistan.” Having previous professional experience, he was frustrated finding out that JDHS doesn’t offer boys volleyball. He also states, “I really want to play with students here, because they’re way more skilled, but sadly we don’t have boys volleyball.”
Aminov also spoke on why he thinks this sport isn’t offered, saying, “[Opposing] Coaches don’t think our school has lots of good players – they don’t want to waste their time.”
Many students grew up watching sports movies as kids. They dreamed of being a star on a high school football team. When first attending John Dewey, I was excited to find out more about the sports being offered, football specifically. Upon finding that football was one of the sports that was not offered, I was upset and didn’t think I could truly live my dream in high school.
Also, this is extremely frustrating for people who participated in these sports outside of school, or in middle school, and can’t get an opportunity to do so here. These are also very likely to be the same people who dream of being on a high school sports team, so not only do their dreams get crushed- but their hard work, and previous experience goes to waste and won’t be put to use at the school level.
As one of the sports coaches, Varsity Wrestling, and Boys Varsity Lacrosse coach, Keith Conrade was able to provide additional perspective. He states, “When the school was built, it was built strictly on academics, because John Dewey’s philosophy was not to be competitive.” While this might’ve been the case, sports are now offered in our school and are continuing to improve and prosper every year. Mr. Conrade also gave insight on the issues surrounding football, saying “Our football field is under construction… football is very costly because of the insurance, taking care of the equipment, and needing doctors and trainers on site when running games.” Funding is a big issue when it comes to starting up a football program, but a step in the right direction could be starting out with a football club where unofficial practices and tryouts can be hosted in the hopes of creating a team.
According to many students and coaches, adding more sports for students would bring together more people and further unite the school into one big family. For an extremely popular sport like football, where a bunch of people gather to watch their school’s team play, it would be ideal for John Dewey to do the same. In an extremely competitive sports environment throughout the city, working together and trying their hardest would really make our students connect on a deeper level.
