Mandatory tutoring and homework sessions should help football
players succeed, but what of other GHS students who slip below a
2.0 GPA?
Gilroy High School’s football coaches reacted swiftly and decisively to the fact that 40 percent of the previous year’s freshman team did not earn a 2.0 grade point average and thus were not eligible to play football. They instituted mandatory tutoring and homework sessions.
If only that sense of urgency and commitment were pervasive throughout the entire Gilroy public school system, then there would surely be progress.
The football coaches have demonstrated what it’s going to take to get the job done. They’ve zeroed in on the fact that freshman have the most difficult time making the adjustment to the big Mustang house, and they’ve taken a team approach to solving the problem throughout the entire football program: Everyone has mandatory tutoring/homework sessions.
If that’s what it takes to get the job done, that’s what they’re going to do. Our hats are off to them for making that demonstrative commitment to academics and discipline.
Yet, it would be disingenuous to not point out the irony in this. What of the students who are not gifted athletically? What of those hundreds who are simply “ineligible” for success? Who’s going to introduce, and, more importantly, insist on mandatory tutoring sessions for them?
In addition to the tutoring sessions, the athletic department took two games off the freshman schedule. It’s another good move to pare down the schedule in order to focus on what’s most important – starting off the high school education on the right foot.
On the football field, of course, there are direct consequences for ineligible students that can perhaps be measured in wins or losses. But Head Football Coach Rich Hammond put the extra efforts into perspective when he said, “We try to make these guys better young men. This was a no-brainer.”
That’s the attitude that must be applied at every school by every staff member to every program in order to “move the pile” forward.
Without that sense of urgency and that commitment to all students, it’s unlikely the present system will result in long-term success.
