OPINION: Alaska high school sports need a level playing field

After 21 seasons as the girls’ basketball coach at Dimond High School, I retired after last season and hung up the whistle. I was very fortunate to be involved in a wonderful program for many years that included a great coaching staff, players, parents, Anchorage School District staff and years of support from my family. High school coaching is very time-consuming, a huge commitment, and can be challenging at times, but when your student-athletes graduate and move on to be successful citizens in the community, it is very rewarding in the long run.

One of the toughest obstacles these past few years has been the lack of consistency and support from the Alaska Schools Activities Association, or ASAA, such as the inconsistency of school-to-school transfers among student athletes. It hasn’t been a fair playing field for years. Some of the past rulings have definitely favored certain schools and programs.

The Dimond High School girls’ basketball program is very fortunate to have been involved in the 3A/4A state tournament since 2007. However, ASAA’s quality and lack of support for coaches, players and officials, as well as the events, have been very disheartening these past few years. Alaska’s student-athletes and coaches are competing day in and day out to qualify for the state tournament every season. Any organization running an event knows the driving force comes down to finances and budget.

One of the more disappointing factors these past few years is qualifying schools having to pay additional fees and purchasing extra passes for teams to participate in the state tournament. With a lack of budget for most high school activities, this isn’t much of a reward for qualifying for the state tournament.

One financial solution would be to revamp the budget and staffing at ASAA. There is too much funding going toward staff salaries. The majority of ASAA’s staff are retired educators who are receiving a state retirement pension from the State of Alaska. Their ASAA salaries are basically a second income source. ASAA’s total salaries could range from $350,000 to $450,000 per year for their staff. In the long run, those funds could be used toward helping our student-athletes and their sports, as well as help offset state tournament expenses.

One possible solution is for ASAA to go outside its circle when making decisions and lean more on statewide coaches to help make decisions for their respective sport. Alaska has many great coaches who sacrifice every season to coach their student-athletes. During any sport seasons, coaches are the ones that are in the trenches every day dealing with day-to-day operations and situations. Decisions coming from ASAA are not always what is best for our student-athletes. A majority of the ASAA staff haven’t coached in years. The issues coaches are dealing with today are definitely more challenging than what they were dealing with 10 years ago.

ASAA should consider forming statewide coaching panels for each specific sport with representation from all over the state. This would also help ASAA with its budget because most coaches would be more than happy to step up as volunteers and not worry about getting paid to better their sport and do what is best for their student-athletes. High school coaches are overworked and underpaid, and most coaches aren’t coaching because of the money. ASAA did try to form a basketball coach committee a few years ago, but they had no commitment or follow-through in the long run.

I hope ASAA will be more openminded down the road and use the resources that are available to do what is best for our student-athletes, not what is best for the staff at ASAA who haven’t been coaching on a field or court in years.

We can always look at the negativity in any situation. However, when we focus on finding a solution, it usually brings more positives than negatives in the long run.

Like their mission statement says, “Win for life!” The ball is in your court, ASAA.

Jim Young is a retired ASD educator and coach.

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