|
Sidelines Kalani Simpson |
Dividing public, private
schools not a tragedyI enjoyed our paper's Sunday package on the shadowy possibility of a secret plan to split public and private schools in high school athletics.
Intriguing stuff.
But you know what? I wouldn't really care if it's true.
Go ahead, separate. Secede from the union. Follow through with your threat. There will be no tears here.
Don't cry for me, Argentina.
Oh, I suppose the end of a Utopian dream would be disappointing.
But a tragedy? A travesty?
Not quite.
Some contend that such a sinister possibility lurks only because some grumpy old men can't let go of a grudge. Maybe. But I think history has to take equal credit for bringing (and holding) Hawaii's public and private schools together in sport.
As in, we're all still searching for the magic of Honolulu Stadium in the old-school ILH.
We're all trying to recapture that spirit. And mahalos to everyone who tries. It is indeed a noble goal.
But those days are long gone. These days, just a Utopian dream.
Some say all the recent state championship success by Hawaii's public schools shows the current status is working. Excellent point. But another way of looking at it is maybe the public schools no longer need the private schools in order to validate themselves.
Which brings us to this point: Who (or what), exactly, would lose most were this to come to pass?
The spirit of competition?
The children?
OK. But I'm thinking more along the lines of the private schools.
The private schools might still get a vast majority of stud athletes and Division I scholarships. At least at first.
But a public schools champion would still be a Hawaii champion. A private schools champion would merely be champion of the private schools.
Now who needs whom for validation?
You could see why the old guys might salivate at the thought.
IN A PERFECT world, public and private schools would play the way they did in old Honolulu Stadium, in those long ago glory days.
That's in a perfect world.
And maybe, for a few years at least, it actually was.
Here, now, the more interesting question might not be why public and private schools shouldn't play each other but why they should?
It might be something we should talk about in the open, and not on secret agendas and behind closed doors.
It could even be an interesting experiment for a year or a few. It might force us to take a longer look at high school sports, and its role in our culture. And public and private schools, and theirs. It might make us smarter, better for it, in the end.
It might make the inevitable eventual reunification sweeter and more satisfying for all.
I'm not leading the charge on this. I'm not in favor of it. I'm not in the hui.
I am grumpy, though not quite old.
But if there is a secret plan, I'm not in a panic about it. A tragedy? Not quite.
See the Columnists section for some past articles.
Kalani Simpson can be reached at ksimpson@starbulletin.com