R-I athletics sees increased participation, struggling to schedule games

By MICHAEL SHINE

Staff Writer

Despite a national trend of declined student athletics enrollment for the 2018-19 school year, the Poplar Bluff junior and senior high programs have seen an increase in participating students.

Athletic Director Kent Keith gave his annual presentation to the school board Thursday, when he discussed a national survey put on by the National Federation of State High School Associations.

The study found that for the first time in 30 years, participation in high school sports declined for the 2018-19 school year. National participation declined by 43,395 students, according to the study. Missouri specifically saw a decrease of 2,436 students, while Arkansas saw an increase of 1,268 participating students.

The Poplar Bluff R-I School District is expecting an increase of 90 students participating in athletics, according to Keith. In October last year, the program had 311 students and so far this school year it’s at 340. Keith projects about 947 students will participate as part of 51 different teams for the rest of the year. For last year, there were 857 student athletes. However, declining numbers in the surrounding area are still having an impact, Keith said.

“With football this year ­— particularly the seventh and eighth, ninth grade and JV teams — we had contracted games with different schools for the seventh grade football team, for the eighth grade football team,” Keith said. “Then those schools get together and decide they don’t have enough numbers to have but one team. That’s what we’ve run into.”

He said scheduling worked out a little better for the ninth grade and JV teams than the junior high teams because a game was moved and Keith was able to add a game against West Plains for those teams.

“I really feel bad for our junior high boys and girls on the football team and am trying to get them more opportunities to play,” Keith said.

Keith said one of the things the SEMO conference is working on addressing is the scheduling issues. He plans to address the idea of playing one team multiple times in a season. When he first started, Keith said, that was common practice, but schools are now being pushed to schedule games against everybody, which he said is making things more difficult when a school decides they don’t have enough interest to have two teams.

At the junior high level, a team can play a maximum of six games during a season. This fall, the seventh grade boys football team was only able to play about four.

“That’s a disappointment to me because I want to be able to play as much as possible,” Keith said. “It kills me for those kids not to be able to play as much as they can.”

Another part of the issue, Keith said, is that Poplar Bluff is several hours away from any other schools its size. For most away games, the team travels anywhere from just shy of an hour to Sikeston to the approximately two and a half hours to St. Louis.

Keith said the students starting at seventh grade know they’ll need to be able to travel to play games. In order to do that, they need to keep their grades up. According to board documents, students in the athletic program have an average of a B+, with the lowest team average being wrestling with a B- and the highest of an A- for volleyball.

Board President John Scott said one thing he’s noticed is there have been fewer incidents of student athletics getting into trouble, fighting or having other disciplinary issues.

“We just don’t hear about it,” he said. “It doesn’t happen. It’s been a long time since I remember an issue with that kind of thing. Wins and losses are one thing, but when we’re teaching kids to be good kids who do well in school, to be better people in life, I think we do an excellent job.”

On other positive notes, Keith said he’s starting to see an impact on the high school soccer team due to the junior high team allowing students to get excited about soccer at a younger age. He said it hasn’t impacted win-loss record yet, but the school is seeing more interest.

The track team, boys swim team, girls wrestling among other teams are also seeing an increase in participation.

Keith said the booster club is looking into a new building at the stadium for storage, concessions and restrooms. If that plan does move forward, Dr. Scott Dill, superintendent, said he told the club he likes to give the board final approval on the design and as such it would go before them.

Keith’s main concern from the report is about scheduling to make sure all the students are able to play as much as possible.

“We’ve gotten tons of phone calls at our office, parents complaining, parents with ideas of ‘Have you looked at,’ ‘Have you looked at?’ Yes, we have looked at,” Keith said. “Myself and all our coaches are doing everything we can to schedule. I feel the parents’ pain, I understand. We’re going to do everything we can to address it and do better in the future, but we’re kind of at everybody’s mercy when they’re in the schedule and they tell us they don’t have enough to play.”