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Plenty is happening among area high school athletics already. Moving parts include area athletes currently in college sports transferring, coaches moving to other programs or resigning, and even some high school students transferring.
Some departures and changes are taking place in successful programs – even where long-term program success continues – and struggling programs.
I have no idea how many readers my column has, but for those of you reading this morning who are scholastic athletes who view all this movement as a shock to the system or overwhelming, in the long term, it’s really not.
What you’ll see in coaching changes, athlete transfers, graduation, and attrition in participation as a graduating class moves from middle schoolers to seniors is part of an infinite game.
My employer’s chief executive officer (CEO) conducted via an onsite auditorium presentation and via zoom gathered our teams worldwide to discuss 2026’s first quarter results.
He used the term infinite game to describe what we’re a part of, and to give us props for a very robust first quarter.
Much like athletes who start and end an athletic season in about the same time as a fiscal quarter spans (13 weeks), we set some records, and we made better than expected progress toward our entire year’s objectives.
He explained if we were an athletic team in a four-quarter game, while we have three quarter left to secure a win, there is a constructive albeit brief moment where it’s appropriate to celebrate some wins along the way.
Those incremental wins, those personal bests accomplished make it easier to stay focused on missions and goals toward additional success.
Unlike a freshman high school athlete who might play four years in at least one sport, move on to college or the trades, and have a perception of their high school years based on their personal experiences, those of us rooted here as a results will see – and sometimes even successfully predict – the sine waves of athletic success our favorite teams will experience.
If your frame of reference for Warsaw girls’ basketball, for instance, covered the last four years and its 82 wins, you might expect 20-win seasons, conference titles with almost a two-score streak of league wins will just keep on going.
Well, that just depends on who takes the reigns when the starting lineups are introduced again in early November 2026.
This goes for every scholastic sports team in the Times-Union coverage area.
Good luck, for example if you think you’ll attain success just because you witnessed and practiced daily among six seniors who made girls basketball arguably as interesting as it’s ever been around here just because you’re next.
Each year if a group of athletes can duplicate some, but not all levels of a postseason run, or break a record here or there, but don’t earn the privilege of a ring ceremony, we are still going to buy tickets to watch you in action, work at your events and such.
It’s OK for you to start your season with a state title as a goal. We adults working full-time set goals every year, too.
We have to figure out how to replace high-performance team members, take on the work of highly regarded retirees, or pivot to another part of our industries where demand and profitability suddenly take center stage from other historically successful product and segments.
To say we shall not experience – in Warsaw for example – another laurel-laden scholastic athletic year the way the 2024-2025 school year played out is not a disparagement.
We’re a public school who can now welcome transfers with far less red tape than we did last school year, but it still takes a lot of moving parts to experience something like that school year.
There are coaches who play the infinite game while their graduating classes move on, and they seem to optimize their collective talent each scholastic sports year.
If you take their ability to stay on top of training, strategy, and culture-building we have to remind ourselves there will be some years where our contributions to the athletic programs in particular – our DNA – are also an essential ingredient.
Our 2024 state football runner-up squad, and our 2024-2025 boys’ basketball squad reaching the regionals had… some dudes: functional size, ability through practice reps, conditioning, probably the most multi-sport success among many individuals in recent years… with the blend of intangibles like collective leadership, great study habits, and… good old fashioned great DNA.
It’s no accident that each team had the greatest headcount of senior class participation, you know.
Look… every year I’m just as interested to see how well a group of athletes plays the hand they’re dealt. There are some fun what-ifs each team will bring to its sport. So many of you are just solid people who will be very productive adults. It will be fun to see you take your first steps into the infinite game.
