In his heartbreakingly simple song “Speed Trap Town,” contemporary southern sage and roots rock troubadour Jason Isbell sings of the small-town high school football effect: “It’s a boy’s last dream and man’s first loss.” To be young and perpetually hopeful only to eventually come face to face with defeat — this is the coming of age sports story we embrace here in Arkansas.

But what is a Friday autumn night without the bright lights of a football field beckoning us to remember those last dreams and first losses?

Early this spring, Chris Goering asked this very question on a social media post:

I started on the defensive line for three years at little Medicine Lodge, Kansas, and we improved each year, from 3-6 to 7-2 to an undefeated regular season my senior year, 9-0, before running into the private school bullies from Wichita: Wichita Collegiate. (Although they played in the same class as us, they could recruit from the huge city of Wichita and had at least 5 seniors on that team play major Division One football.) We played only with the players living in our small town and public school district. Though it was 27 years ago, this story still stings and it currently reverberates on the high school football field and education landscape of Arkansas.

Medicine Lodge is 100 miles from Anywhere, USA, that most Americans could point to on map. It’s a small agriculture-centered town that has largely stayed in the game all these years because there happened to be a large gypsum deposit nearby, which enables the town’s industry to make and ship wallboard all over the region from there. I love my hometown, and I feel just as connected to it when I return to visit my parents. The people of that town still have my back all these years later. Like most towns in Arkansas, it is a small town a long ways away from any bigger towns.

While I’d love to recount more stories from high school football, what I owe my hometown is to make sure that your kids will continue to be able to form productive identities in small town sports and extracurricular activities, to feel an entire community’s support at their backs in basketball gyms, at the softball diamond, and on the football field. Your kids deserve a chance to host a state playoff game where they cannot see past the people standing around the field and filling both sets of bleachers.

As a former high school (and college) football player turned teacher I believe that Governor Sanders’ new education plan poses a deep threat to all rural schools across the state. I want to preserve important opportunities for our kids and protect the small towns of America.

What the Governor is up to is pretty simple. She deeply wants to open school choice up to the state by adding vouchers for private schools now and create a free-for-all of charter schools later. The problem, as most of you who live in rural areas know, your towns don’t have access to private schools or charter schools, and losing even a few members of your schools to this competition could have disastrous effects.

Charters and private schools don’t outperform public schools, and they don’t often offer comprehensive extracurriculars or sports like football (typically), pathways for young people to be as connected to and as proud as I am of Medicine Lodge, Kansas, all these years later. These schools are not an improvement; they are a means of destroying your towns by taking the schools out at the knees, just as Wichita Collegiate did to us those years ago. They open up public school tax dollars that you and I pay to be wasted, as incidents around the country prove over and over.

With the LEARNS act, Governor Sanders is a 5-star athlete playing quarterback for Wichita Collegiate in 1995. She has all the power and all the advantages in the world on the football field, and she’s coming to your town to not only dash your dreams of holding your communities together but to beat you 42-7. The problem is that with the LEARNS act, not only will the things you love about your town be different, the foundation that the public school provides will be significantly compromised or reduced to rubble.

-Chris Goering, #73

The post a boys last dream and a man’s first loss: saving high school football appeared first on Arkansas Strong.

The greatest dynasty in collegiate athletic history? The Arkansas Razorbacks.

Over 150 years ago, President Andrew Johnson began the tradition of hosting athletic champions when he invited baseball’s Washington Nationals and Brooklyn Atlantics to join him in a White House ceremony.

In the age of television, we’ve made a big production out of the White House hosting Super Bowl winners, NBA champions, and the college equivalents. And they might bring in the women’s gymnastics team if they win Olympic gold. 

But track and field? No, not them. Not the men and women wearing singlets, running around an oval, jumping or throwing heavy objects.

A few years ago Stadium Talk told the story of America’s greatest college sports dynasties. Oklahoma, Texas, Alabama and Notre Dame football teams all received mentions, as did the UCLA Bruins men’s basketball teams. Penn State’s men’s wrestling and women’s volleyball teams. And the Connecticut and Tennessee women’s basketball powerhouses under Gene Auriemma and Pat Summit, respectively. 

How about that dynamite Minnesota women’s ice hockey dynasty that won 6 national championships? Bet you didn’t know the Trinity College Bantams men’s squash program won 17 national titles. To quote the author, Jennifer Studer Daley, “no other team on this list comes close to touching the number of titles that belong to the Iowa Hawkeyes wrestling program.” They won twenty three.

Ms. Daley is correct; no other team on her list comes close. That’s because Ms. Daley’s list does not include the greatest dynasty in American collegiate athletic history: the Arkansas Razorback Track and Field teams, which have won a collective 49 national titles in track and field and cross country, 42 under legendary coach John McDonnell.  

To be fair to Ms. Daley, the iconic Sports Illustrated magazine printed a similar story, and also forgot to mention the Razorbacks.

National spotlights on track and field usually focus on Oregon, where legendary NIKE founder Phil Knight spent his running days. Oregon has won 32 national titles, which is no slouch.

It’s also no Arkansas.

The ancient Greek and Roman empires were the backdrop for the first organized athletic competitions, which evolved into track and field as we know it today. The decathlon is thought of as the supreme test of speed, skill, and endurance to test the best all-around athletes. And we celebrate the marathon today with road races around the world that give everyday all-comers a chance for glory. 

The White House is not going to invite the national champion Arkansas men’s and women’s track teams for a visit. But that does not mean that Arkansans should pat our tracksters and coaches on the head and send them on their way. They deserve better.

In Arkansas, Football is king. Basketball is second. Baseball is third. No need to argue any of that. Would football or basketball recruiting be harmed if we started making a big deal over Track and Field? If the university became known as a track school? No, Track and Field prominence would diminish nothing in football or basketball. If anything, it would make the U of A look more cosmopolitan, adding to the perception that NWA is a sophisticated cultural corridor, complete with spectacular art museums, world class bicycling trails, and a modern medical school with a new way of thinking.  

Hot Springs has impressed me with its presentation of offerings, which celebrate the city’s history as home to some of Major League Baseball teams’ spring training during the 1930s to early 1950s. In February, the city dedicated only the third known statue of Babe Ruth (the other two are in Baltimore and Japan). There’s a baseball trail with plaques depicting the exploits of famous major leaguers. Babe Ruth is said to have hit two of the longest home runs he ever hit during spring training in Hot Springs. The city hosts an annual event bringing in retired major league players to speak on baseball then and now. All of this over spring training from long ago.

I’m not in the PR business, but I think I know a lost opportunity when I see one. When you are the greatest in history at something, step up and tell your story. No one else is going to do your crowing for you. And in the case of Track and Field, it is not even a close call. 

The post America’s Track and Field Dynasty  appeared first on Arkansas Strong.