Mount Greylock School Committee Educated About Baseball Program Change
Update: This week, the Mount Greylock administration informed families of interested baseball players that the school will open the baseball program to seventh-graders with the understanding that those players could be cut to keep the total level of participation near the stated target of 36 players.
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Mount Greylock Regional School's athletic director last week appeared before the school committee to explain a program change that has riled some seventh-grade parents at the middle-high school.
Lindsey von Holtz laid out the reasoning behind a move announced in August to open the school's baseball program to students in eighth grade and up, rather than allowing seventh-graders, as was done the last few years.
Like other schools that have middle schoolers in the same building with high school students, Mount Greylock is allowed to open athletic opportunities to the younger grades according to the rules of the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association.
Last year, the school's junior varsity team was large enough that it was split into two groups and extra JV games were scheduled to allow more opportunities. One of the two JV groups was dominated by middle schoolers, but Mount Greylock never actually had a middle school team, as some believed.
"There was no such thing as seventh- and eighth-grade baseball," von Holtz said in an interview with iBerkshires.com earlier this winter. "They called themselves 7th/8th but they were part of our JV team."
The problem with that model is that Mount Greylock does not have the money in the budget to hire coaches for three separate teams. And families were informed during the summer that baseball would be open to eighth- through 12th-graders in the 2019 season.
This winter, a group of students and families circulate a petition to the School Committee asking to "reinstate" the third team.
"We did not eliminate a program," von Holtz told the committee. "We still offer JV and varsity baseball."
Von Holtz said that in consultation with varsity coach Steve Messina, she looked at the likely participation numbers, knowing the school would have 33 baseball players returning in Grades 8 to 12 and another 14 incoming seventh-graders who had expressed interest in the sport.
"That makes 47 students," she said. "And I have to reduce it to 36 or 37 students. Two options were to open it to everyone and make cuts. You'd be cutting 10 seventh-graders. In my opinion, that's too early to cut someone from a sport.
Von Holtz told the committee that she met with some of the seventh-grade boys behind the petition to explain the situation and asked them whether being cut from the sport in their first year of middle school would discourage them from trying out in future years. They said it would not, but the boys admitted they did not know how their peers would respond to being cut.
"What was the size of the seventh- and eighth-grade program the last few years?" School Committee member Steven Miller asked von Holtz after her presentation.
"It wasn't a seventh- and eighth-grade program," she restated. "There was a JV program that we cut into two groups. It was extra JV games so everyone could get playing time. Unfortunately, it was too many, and I can only schedule so many extra games.
"Before the last couple of years, our numbers were down, so we started adding seventh- and eighth-graders to JV."
Miller, a youth baseball coach himself, asked if the school could bring in volunteers to coach a larger JV group that included seventh-graders.
"I can't have volunteers coaching the kids," von Holtz said.
And she can't easily add another paid position, at a base cost of about $2,200 (depending on experience), von Holtz said.
"If you add a baseball coach, you have to add a softball coach [because of Title IX]," she explained. "And there are at least three sports ahead of baseball and softball numbers-wise."
Von Holtz said the school's cross country running program has the highest athlete-to-coach ratio. Boys and girls soccer and lacrosse, with ratios of around 20-to-1 are each higher than baseball and softball, at around 17-to-1, she said.
"If you want to add that many coaches, we can, but I hear the budget is tight," von Holtz told the committee.
During the public comment period at the start of the meeting and before von Holtz spoke, Lanesborough parent Michelle Johnson, who identified herself as the parent of a baseball player, referred to the agenda item as the "baseball shenanigans" and suggested that the school either limit the sport to high schoolers or open it to middle and high school students and make cuts.
Von Holtz addressed that idea in her remarks to the committee, emphasizing the principle that Mount Greylock offers high school sports that may or may not be open to the lower grades if opportunities allow.
"We're not going to cut a 10th- or 11th-grader for a seventh-grader," she told the committee.
Committee member Al Terranova asked the chair whether the School Committee even had the power to make a decision on whether to allow seventh-graders to play in the baseball program.
"That would be the administration's call," Joe Bergeron answered. "However, it's all linked to how much money is allocated to coaching overall."
Von Holtz said she was open to any suggestions from the committee, which is developing the fiscal 2020 school budget. No motions were made, and the committee moved on to the rest of its agenda.
Tags: baseball, high school sports, MGRS,
