By Del Stover
10/26/04 — You’d expect to find “surfer dudes” in the high schools of California and Hawaii — but in central New Jersey?
They’re out there. In fact, the Manasquan High School surfing team will be hitting the waves until ocean temperatures drop into the low 50s later this fall, says coach Erich Hoffman. Until then, wet suits will allow students to keep practicing.
As a high school sport, surfing is unlikely to match the popularity of football or basketball. For that matter, neither are archery, bowling, hockey, lacrosse, or swimming.
But so what? Ask school athletic directors across the nation about “minor sports,” as they call them, and they’ll tell you these offer the average student far more opportunities to participate, learn sportsmanship, and enjoy some good, clean fun.
Take curling, for example. One of the more obscure sports found in high schools (usually in the upper Midwestern states), curling involves a team sliding a polished granite stone across a field of ice and influencing its movement by sweeping brooms across its path. Yet, what makes the sport a worthwhile school activity — besides the fun — is that participants don’t need the speed of a track star or the athletic build of a linebacker.
“It’s a lifetime sport,” says Rick Patzke, a spokesperson for the United States Curling Association. “You don’t have to be Arnold Schwarzenegger to play”
The same reasoning helps explain the growing popularity of bowling in high schools, says Ennis Proctor, executive director of the Mississippi High School Activities Association. This summer, the organization gave the okay for bowling to join its list of sanctioned school sports.
“We put a lot of emphasis on the lifetime sports — sports that they can continue to play when they get older,” he says. “This is important. Not everybody can be a football or basketball star, and this will touch more kids.”
And that means more students will learn about sportsmanship and discipline, and they’ll have an opportunity to feel better about themselves, Proctor says.
Indeed, students can take great pride in their accomplishments in any sport, says Doug Rowe, coach of the Baldwinsville (N.Y.) High School lacrosse team. In his school, some of the biggest athletic stars — the “who’s who” kids — play lacrosse.
Elsewhere in the nation, minor sports run the gamut from the familiar to the novel. Tennis, archery, and swimming have had a small following in the schools for decades. But some schools now are reflecting the times with skateboarding and snowboarding clubs.
Although it’s premature to talk of trends, some minor sports are enjoying new popularity. For example, surfing recently has expanded beyond its traditional ground in Hawaii and California to New Jersey, Florida, and Puerto Rico. And Hawaii recently announced that the state’s public high schools can create official surfing teams for the first time.
In Mississippi, meanwhile, power lifting and bowling are growing in popularity, and curling, once limited to states like Wisconsin, are popping up in a handful of schools in the Southwest and Pacific Northwest that have all-year ice rinks in their communities.
One blue-blood sport that’s growing rapidly these days is lacrosse, called by fans the “fastest game on two feet.” Combining the speed of soccer, some of the physical contact of football, and the cutting and passing of basketball, the game has spread from its traditional base in Maryland and New York to Colorado, Ohio, and Virginia.
“It just took off to beat the band,” Rowe says. “It’s unbelievably fun.”
It’s not always clear why a minor sport takes hold in a region, sports enthusiasts say. Local conditions play a part. Even with modern technology, no one expects to see curling gain a major foothold in Arizona.
In some communities, however, local sports enthusiasts have stepped forward to offer their services as coaches. Elsewhere, local sports clubs are offering to make equipment and training facilities available in a bid to recruit young people.
Sometimes money talks. In Mississippi, the state bowling association is making schools an offer they’re finding hard to refuse — it’s offered to pick up the tab for bowling lanes, uniforms, and shoes — everything but transportation — in a bid to recruit new players into the sport.
“It’s a mighty good deal for us,” Proctor says. “It’s not often that you have somebody come to you about expenses.”