Master's Program in Athletic Administration

Test Drive a Module: Revisit the Challenge

Introduction | Learning Activities | Review | Revisit the Challenge

Consider the following situation:

During the past decade, one of four high schools within a large urban school district has developed a profile of excellence in both girls and boys basketball competition. Boys and girls teams have been conference champions for 8 of the past 10 years and both have appeared in the state tournament 6 times within the decade. The girls' team won the state association championship 3 times and the boys' team was champion or runner-up 5 times within the same time frame. Both teams have been invited to appear in prominent holiday tournaments throughout the nation and graduates of the school have gone on to play at highly visible Division I NCAA basketball programs with full grant-in-aid scholarships.

Increasing numbers of students from the other three district high schools have transferred to the "basketball school" and questions have been raised about recruiting and undue influence by local coaches, administrators and the state association. To date, no evidence has been collected that would support these allegations. An open-transfer rule within the district allows students to transfer to any other school within the district regardless of the residence of the parents. This policy has also been approved by the state association in response to the school district’s mandate to equalize ethnic enrollments in its schools.

As an additional issue, a basketball uniform and athletic shoe manufacturer has offered to provide free equipment to the "basketball school" in return for display of company logos on uniforms, advertising in the school contest program, banners in the gym and on the scoreboard. There is also an unwritten expectation that those basketball players with remaining high school eligibility will also play in private-sector competition during the off-season thus limiting their participation in other high school sports. The coach of the private-sector team is not the head coach of the boys or girls teams but works closely with both high school coaches to ensure consistency in the teaching of terminology, skills and team tactics. This coach is also paid a summer stipend by the equipment company to supervise both the girls and boys teams in private sector competition.

What issues concern you in this situation? How should they be handled?

You should prepare your final response in a Microsoft Word document and submit it below to the Drop Box database. (Since this is a demonstration module, this feature is not activated. Normally you would submit your final response to a Drop Box database for the instructor to review.)

Your initial ideas are listed below for your reference.

Feature is not activated.

Your Initial Ideas:

No initial ideas were provided during this session.

Introduction | Learning Activities | Review | Revisit the Challenge