By Erin Rosenthal
Senior Writer

Each season, sports teams at this school work hard, play hard and conquer competition only to have that tantalizing CCS title swept from their grasp by a defeat from a private school team. There are many sports teams at our school that perform at the top of their league. But year after year they fail to bring home a CCS championship because of the ultimate, perfected, skilled, bred-to-be-the-best private school sports teams.

Why are private school sports teams so unbeatable?

For one, Private schools have the money to throw around that public schools cannot afford. Each student that attends a private high school pays tens of thousands of dollars for each year of their education. After paying the regular costs of running a school, that money is able to go to building pristine pools and fields, buying top-notch equipment and hiring the top-notch coaches to train their teams. Anyone who has ever played at St. Francis has had the opportunity to enjoy playing on fields manicured to golf course precision, or using equipment hardly five years old.

In addition, they are able to recruit the top performing players in the league. Instead of having to choose from a lineup of players attending their school, as coaches for public teams must do, coaches at private schools can take their pick from any of the schools in the area. All a private school has to do to get that hot-shot water polo player from our pool to its own, is to offer the athlete a free scholarship to their school.

The result? Powerful teams with the resources and training to defeat any competition. This superiority of private schools in sports is completely unfair as public school teams are not offered the same privileges as private school teams.

Unlike private schools, our school cannot afford to manicure our fields, pay for new warm ups, or even replace speakers stolen from the football stadium.

Competition between private and public sports teams is also unfair as recruitment weakens our teams, further widening the gap our teams’ performance and that of private school teams.

Last year Jimmy Sandman, then a sophomore, was the goalie for the varsity boys water polo team and an essential asset to the team. When Menlo High School recruited him to play for its water polo team on a full scholarship, he agreed, leaving a large gap in the team structure that it is still attempting to fill.

When CCS rolls around, the superiority of private school teams takes an especially hard blow on our sports teams. Time and time again teams at our school have lost in CCS because of the blaring disparities between private and public sports teams.

For five frustrating years, our varsity boy’s tennis team has again and again made it to CCS semi-finals only to be knocked out of CCS by a loss to a private school sports team. Teams, like our tennis teams, do everything they can to build up their skills and reach the level of performance of private school teams. Yet it still not enough, and come CCS, we lose again and again to private school teams.

So, what can we, as a public school, do? We cannot afford to increase funds in our sports programs, we cannot recruit players or prevent the recruitment of ours, and generally we cannot meet the performance level of the private school teams. All we can do is continue to strive to defeat the private school sports teams who all paid well for their “hard earned” success.