DC Athletics - Bad TV

The Friday night game between Dunbar and Coolidge High was broadcast nationally although a lot of people were not able to see it because their cable systems don’t carry ESPNU-TV. I watched the game via Direct TV and came away incredibly impressed with the young men on both sides of the ball.

Dunbar, the clear favorite with a few players headed to division one colleges proved too big, too fast and perhaps too talented for Coolidge. But a big part of me was pulling for the younger, smaller and less experienced Coolidge players who refused to give an inch throughout the hard fought contest.

Dunbar won the game but there were no losers on this night, except for maybe DC Public school officials, the Mayors and Council members over the years who have been going at public school athletic budgets with a sharp knife. Even though hundreds of thousands of dollars was committed, most of it in overtime pay, to get the Dunbar facilities ready for last week’s big game, the cameras and the ESPNU broadcasters showed us and the country just how bad our facilities are when compared to other high schools that have been featured on National TV.

The football field was marked; lines and numbers drawn and that isn’t always the case; but the water left by recent rain was so heavy that players were running around and not through the puddles. The grass looked horrible. The kind you see in a vacant abandoned lot. The football field was surrounded by a track that is not suited for running; in fact there is no track at any DC public school that meets minimum standards for an official track meet. I felt badly for the players Friday night and all the DC public school athletes who have gone before them under such terrible playing conditions.

The temperature inside Dunbar’s gym was more suited for a sauna when we toured the school last week to inspect the repairs. Lockers had been painted, showers repaired and the room where players had been using weights donated by a prison had been emptied in anticipation of a new set of weights. The DC Council has now appropriated tens of millions of dollars to correct deficiencies throughout the city’s public school buildings. The shame is that it has taken this long.

One Dunbar assistant coach told me that fixing conditions in the athletic departments should have been part of the Mayor’s Crime emergency. “We’re keeping kids out of trouble in here year round” he said.