SACCO: A battle won with class

I guess it’s the cynical journalist I wear on my sleeve like a cuff link that had me feeling the battle for indoor track was a losing one.

And as I pulled up to Wilson Memorial Middle School last Thursday, my gut told me I was going to be talking to a lot kids with tears in their eyes. I was so sure that the voices of the indoor track athletes would go unnoticed that I was prepared to bet my 2008 Scion on it, which, coincidentally, cost me more than it cost the school system to keep indoor track.

Thankfully, I was wrong. And that public hearing and the days leading up to it proved that a lot of adults have it wrong when it comes to this current crop of high schoolers and the athletes who roam the halls.

When I sent out a call for e-mails to gauge athletes’ thoughts on losing a sport they love, those e-mails never strayed off point. They never insulted other sports, the school board or the Augusta County school system bean counters.

Pure and simple, they were pure and simple.

“It’s like a family to me.”

“I want another chance.”

“I want to accomplish my goals.”

And, much like that public hearing, the best voices – written or spoken – came from the athletes. Really, it was the only place they could have come from.

In the end, the board voted unanimously, thanks to some on-the-point, moving speeches by the students, to keep indoor track next winter.

What this whole event taught me is that this generation of high schoolers does have a voice and it’s a voice that some will listen to.

One adult (yes, there was only one e-mail sent my way against saving track; there were 164 sent in favor of keeping it on the books) who sent an e-mail had his message lost in a sea of personal attacks (“You know what, Mr. Sacco. I think sometimes you write things just to write things,” he wrote. Well, writing is my job so I guess you got me there.) and chastising this paper’s declining circulation. (Um, hello. All newspapers are watching circulation numbers decline.) His e-mail begged the question: “Who are the real adults here?”

But it didn’t start with the indoor track saga, this grow-older-outward-but-dumber-in-the-brain mentality. When I called Waynesboro High School’s rule of keeping students in the stands during football games “ludicrous” it was the students who would smile when they saw me, say “I know,” shrug their shoulders and move along. Meanwhile, some “adult” members of the WHS faculty decided the best way to get their argument across was to tell me how “unprofessional” I am or that I was “inciting the students to rebel.” The latter couldn’t be further from the truth since I asked that kids talk to their administrators about the rule. (The former, however, is so ludicrous it’s LOL, as the kids are wont to type these days.) And, of course, those e-mailers also threw out circulation numbers like they’re some sort of holy hand grenade that would make a writer cower in fear.

There was none of that from the students last Thursday, who got their mission accomplished and did it with style and class. A night that proved that, yes, people do listen and, yes, if you work hard enough you get what you want.

Maybe this will spark the student body government at WHS to ask to meet with the school board to get that dumb fannies-in-the-stands rule changed. Maybe the stand-up actions of those few athletes will entice others to ask the Virginia High School League why the R.E. Lee student section had to plea with an armed Virginia Commonwealth University police officer to allow them to take their shirts off to show off some good, old fashioned, get-behind-our-team chest painting? After all, they froze for an hour or so painting themselves up in the parking lot only be to told they couldn’t take their shirts off per the VHSL’s Sportsmanship Code.

And while they’re talking to the VHSL, maybe some athletes can ask for one state title in each classification for each sport since adults love peppering message boards with “watered-down-playoff” whining. The kids don’t care. A state title is a state title.

But, then again, it’s something a lot of us are used to, you know, like when adults looked us in the eye and told us to “act our age,” and we have to bite our tongues so we don’t respond. It’s best to stay voiceless on that.

Leave the dumb insults to us adults.

Some of us still think we win battles that way.