By ADDYSON REAM
Sheridan High School Student
Editor’s Note: The Sheridan Student Column is brought to readers by Sheridan High School’s 10th grade English class, taught by Abby Williams.
Big schools and small schools, as you know, have their differences. Big schools have a lot more talent and normally have extremely good athletes, while small schools may not, and generally, their athletes play multiple sports. Bigger schools normally have more people who play in travel or AAU leagues, and their students normally have the money to have other coaches and trainers outside of school to help them. With this being said, small schools generally have the short end of the stick.
Bigger schools have a much wider range of students to choose from when it comes to athletes; because of this they generally have better athletes and teams. This is also because they have more student-athletes playing in travel leagues or AAU. Smaller schools also run into the issue of their athletes playing multiple sports during the school year, so when it comes to the sport for that season, they haven’t practiced or focused on it in a year.
Bigger schools generally have more money to spend on coaches and equipment. This helps to better their teams in ways smaller schools can’t. They can bring in big-time coaches and trainers to help provide more success with their teams and athletes. Also, with there being so many more students, there are more people who have more money. This means that those who do have more money can personally be going to private coaches who are helping them get better. They could be going to other coaches on the daily and getting better and better.
Smaller schools tend to not have as much money, and they can’t have more than a few coaches on staff for each sport, while bigger schools can have nearly five or six for small sports and 10 plus for sports like football. For example, a small school’s baseball team typically has two coaches, a head coach and an assistant. However, a larger school may have multiple coaches for a baseball team, such as a hitting coach, fielding coach, pitching coach, catching coach, etc. They also have fewer people to choose from which leaves fewer people with as much money as those at the larger schools. This makes a big difference because they might not have as many talented kids to choose from to make their team really good.
From playing at a smaller school and playing travel ball myself, I see a bunch of this. Playing softball for seven years and travel ball for six and a half, I’ve seen the difference between small and big school sports.
For example, this high school softball season, we have five girls who’ve played travel. If you were to go to Westfield, Noblesville, or Carmel, you would have most of the girls on the team playing travel. At Sheridan, there are only a total of 18 girls who play, so there aren’t as many girls we can choose from; however, at a bigger school, you have more like 30 to 40 girls trying out.
Most girls on varsity at these schools play travel and they have really competitive teams, but here only a few of our players practice with private coaches. I myself practice outside of practice and am lucky to have the money to do this, while others do not. At bigger schools, most of their varsity girls do have the money to do this and will. With this being said, this gives a little inside look to what I have experienced. Playing travel ball gives me the advantage to know more girls and recognize when they play both and have the money to do this with.
With all of this being said, small schools generally have the short end of the stick. Smaller schools don’t have as much money to spend on athletics, like coaches and equipment. They don’t have as big of a student body, so they have fewer athletes to choose from for athletics. And with them having a lower student body number, they have fewer athletes who play travel or AAU or have the extra money to spend on outside coaches to help them get better.