High School Sports in the Lansing Area: Good, Bad and Ugly

In this day and age, high school sports are still king across America. The Mid-Michigan area is no exception.

Lansing Catholic and Pewamo Westphalia just won state championships in high school football. DeWitt came very close.

High school football has gotten better, but other high school sports are struggling. There could be many reasons for the ups and downs in boys and girls sports in the Mid-Michigan area. I sure don’t have the answers and it doesn't look like things will change any time soon.

There are many obstacles that I see for high school sports in this area. A couple of the major ones are lack of interest by students and lack of money by parents. Also, the Lansing School District is transitional with families moving in and out of the district.

For example, the Lansing School District boys baseball is not good. It has nothing to do with the coaches, but it’s a participation situation. Boys don’t play baseball like they did when I grew up.

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Girls basketball isn’t really strong either. You have a few schools in Mid-Michigan that are, but it’s spotty at best. This is no reflection on the high schools, coaches, administration, parents or kids in the schools. I don’t know across the board what the problem is.

I also don’t like hearing the COVID-19 pandemic used as an excuse for poor performance because a lot of these schools were like this before the pandemic started. This is just the way it is, so I guess accept the situation like it is.

For whatever reason, it’s not like it was when I was in high school 45 years ago. Can it get better? I hope so!