A couple Saturdays back we ran a Potpourri column about the local spelling bee.

The reporter who covered the bee, Laurie Hahn, found it ironic that the spelling bee, which was conducted over three nights, seemed under-attended by school officials.

It seemed to her that attending a spelling bee would have been a good way for local school officials, school board members and others to show support for academics.

Most of those same school officials attend several basketball games each year, so why not take in a spelling bee or two?

Especially when we have heard complaints from educators who think that there is too much emphasis on athletics.

Sometimes we stick something in Potpourri just to get people to think.

This was one of those times.

The debate over how much emphasis to place on athletics has been going on for a long time, especially in Indiana.

People who move here from other parts of the country are amazed at how basketball crazy we are here.

They can't believe the size of our high school gymnasiums. I read once where Indiana has eight of the 10 largest high school gymnasiums in the country.

We certainly do devote a lot of resources toward athletics here and that is not necessarily a bad thing.

Quite the contrary.

Athletics can be a wonderful thing for students. Athletics teach lots of life lessons. Lessons about the concept of team and how to work well with others.

Lessons about hard work and the rewards of hard work. Lessons about dedication and loyalty.

Lessons about performing under pressure and under deadline. All in all I think school sports are quite valuable.

I have encouraged my kids to get involved.

It's the perfect incentive to do well in school. Want to be on the team? Can't get in trouble. Can't smoke. Can't drink. Can't get bad grades.

I guess the question becomes then, can we have too much of a good thing?

I think we can.

Especially when sports start to tip the scales away from academics.

One teacher/coach told me that if he needs a couple of basketballs all he has to do is ask.

But if he needs something for the classroom it can take weeks.

And more than a few people wondered why Warsaw built a new high school with a gymnasium and two practice floors but no auditorium.

It also becomes problematic when student athletes get special treatment or when the rules aren't applied equally to students and student athletes.

A police officer who ticketed a student athlete for underage drinking recently said he hated to have to do that to an athlete.

I wonder if he would have hated to have to do that to an average C student?

Other problems can arise when parents of student athletes get involved.

They sometimes get a bit overzealous. They become sports agents instead of parents. They rant and rave at coaches, athletic directors, sportswriters, referees and sometimes even opposing student athletes.

Some would say that the Times-Union contributes to any perceived inequity because we devote so much time and effort to cover the activities of student athletes.

But we have no choice.

It is the role of a newspaper to paint a picture of the community it covers.

That is what we try to do.

When thousands of people show up to watch an event, we are obligated to cover it.

If we didn't cover sports, we wouldn't be doing our job.

Frankly, when it comes to covering education, we probably aren't painting that accurate of a picture.

For example, we put the spelling bee on the front page for three days in a row.

On the final night of the bee, there were no more than a dozen people on hand. This included the parents of both participants.

If we covered the spelling bee based solely on community interest, we probably would have put it back by the classifieds.

We put things like the spelling bee winners, valedictorians, salutatorians, scholarship winners and other high-achieving students on the front page because we believe they deserve the recognition.

That's also why we devote several pages per week to that kind of news.

I don't want readers to get the impression that I think there is some huge problem here.

We in Kosciusko County are blessed with wonderful schools. I think the schools do a good job of educating our kids. We have some very dedicated educators.

We also have many talented student athletes and lots of coaches who have spent countless hours mentoring them.

Overall we have a lot to be proud about and thankful for.

But sometimes it's worth taking the 10,000-foot view and assessing our priorities.

I received several calls, personal letters and e-mails regarding this issue over the past couple weeks.

I want to close with a portion of one of those e-mails.

"I've been following your comments and letters about the attendance at the spelling bee vs. the basketball tournament. I think it's very indicative of the priorities of our schools today. I wondered if you had the same reaction as I did to the first question asked when Wawasee was looking into a trimester format. According to a front page article in your newspaper, the first question was how it would affect the eligibility of athletes. Not 'how might this help our students academically' or 'what are the advantages and disadvantages' but how does it affect the sports program.

"When two-thirds of our students cannot pass a test to graduate and figures indicate the problem is as bad or worse in the third grade, what is to become of our country?...

"As today's students 'graduate' and go on to become teachers themselves, the standards cannot help but degenerate. ...

"Indiana is now 47th, I believe, in the nation in SAT scores." [[In-content Ad]]