When John Bajusz was a sophomore at Benet Academy in Lisle, he gave up football, a sport in which he had showed considerable promise as a
quarterback, to concentrate on basketball. He believed it would enhance his chances for a basketball scholarship. In the end, Bajusz rejected scholarship offers from the University of Illinois and other colleges to attend Cornell University, which, like all Ivy League schools, does not award athletic scholarships.
”When I say my goal was to be offered a college scholarship, it was not that I needed to have my way paid to go to college,” says Bajusz, now a junior at Cornell, where he has started at guard for the basketball team the last three seasons. ”That part was more a prestige thing.”
His freshman year at Benet Academy, Bajusz played football, basketball and baseball. By the end of the football season that year, he had been moved up to the sophomore team, a promotion he believes was a bone thrown to him by the football coaches to counter any enticements from Benet basketball coach Bill Geist, a respected and successful coach who also serves as Benet`s assistant dean of students. Such indirect pressures applied by generally well- intentioned coaches can sway an athlete`s decision.
”They`re almost counseling them in terms of their futures,”
psychiatrist Walker says. ”This isn`t just (telling them) how to hit the ball, it`s `What are you going to do with the rest of your life?` They (the coaches) must appreciate the impact of their actions on these children.”
”I don`t think it`s something blatant a coach is trying to do,” says Mike Moyzis, the athletic director at St. Rita High School. ”I think it`s an unfair decision for a coach indirectly to ask kids to make. Indirectly, coaches are telling kids, `You should get involved in football 12 months a year.` They might not say that, but that can be implied. The kids can read where they`re coming from.”
Such was the case with Bajusz.
”Going into my sophomore year, I knew coach Geist`s feelings,” Bajusz says. ”He never came out and said anything, but it was understood. Everyone knew he didn`t think football and basketball mixed. Either way, I wasn`t going to go along with someone else`s plan.”
The Illinois high school football season overlaps the start of basketball practice. At Benet Academy the football season often extends into the first basketball games of the season because the school usually makes it to the state football playoffs. It would have been nearly impossible, Geist says, for Bajusz or any other sophomore to miss that much practice time and still be named to the (basketball) varsity. In addition, basketball, like almost all high school sports, is now a year-round pursuit at nearly all high schools.
”I don`t think we have any three-sport athletes at Benet,” Geist says.
”I`d be surprised if there were a whole lot of them anywhere. Why? First, the kids today have a desire to be as good as they can be, and their coaches want them to be that good. For example, we just ended basketball, and in about a month spring basketball is going to start. Then we have summer basketball.” Geist believes an athlete starts thinking about specializing when he`s a freshman or sophomore. He says it is ”fairly critical” that they make their decisions by the end of their sophomore years.
”Looking back, I kind of wish I had played the rest of high school (in the other sports),” Bajusz says. ”But I don`t really regret that decision because I was able to get to the point where I could continue playing
(basketball) after high school.”
Bajusz`s ambivalence is not unusual. His confusion over how and why he made the decision to specialize is a recurring and underlying theme in the stories of others, even those who adamantly profess to have made it entirely on their own, free from any duress.
Reno believes much of that confusion stems from and is heightened by the high school athletes` almost blind belief in the omniscience of coaches, parents and other adults. She says she was told as a sophomore that she had the potential to be an ”international prospect” in basketball. By her junior year, others were telling her that her chances were better in volleyball.
”Just being so impressionable when you`re a freshman or a sophomore, you can`t differentiate between what people are telling you, whether it will hurt your chances (for scholarships) or not,” Reno says. ”It`s unfair. Whom do you listen to?”
Basarich of Lockport High always takes the pessimistic view with his players regarding their chances of earning scholarships. He says he would rather err on the side of underestimating a player`s ability than delude a player into thinking his talents run deeper than they actually do. ”When they`re done, they can`t tell me, `You told me (I`d get a scholarship), coach,` ” Basarich says. ”I think the biggest fault of the whole system is when people lie to an individual and tell him he`s better than he really is.
”Looking toward the end result (of specialization), we`ve definitely lost a lot of good things. And by good things I mean you play three sports for fun, and you win some games and you lose some games, and you get a scholarship or you don`t, but you still go to college.
”You`ve got to remember, we`re talking easily between $30,000 and $40,000 (the worth of a scholarship). Any parent or athlete who does not give that a thought isn`t thinking very far ahead. Athletes are making up their own minds; it`s not the coaches who are motivating students to play only one sport.”
Geist believes the trend toward specialization creates more openings for other students in athletics and affords the gifted athlete the opportunity to develop his skills fully.
”Everyone likes to be successful,” Geist says. ”If you can figure out a way to be successful, you`re going to go that way. I say let the kid make whatever decision he wants, but make him aware of the situation.”
Isn`t that decision a tough one for someone at that age?
”Sure it is,” Geist says. ”They`re supposed to learn how to make decisions in school. I think the kid should have it all laid in front of him: Here are the advantages and the disadvantages; now try to make an intelligent decision. That`s a learning experience; that`s part of growing up.
”This is not life and death. This is not a terminal decision. They can always go back. It`s not like the end of the world if they choose not to play a sport. It is a big decision because it`s one of the first ones they`ve had to make. We can`t protect these kids always.
”I don`t know if that`s pressure or not. I think that`s reality.”
Dr. Walker disagrees. The problem, he says, is that adolescents usually are not mature enough to foresee the consequences of the decisions they are being forced to make, and it`s therefore necessary for adults to intervene. When that intervention serves only to heighten the pressure, the risk for the adolescent is magnified.
”At age 14, when they are making the decision, they are not prepared to be deciding what to do with the rest of their lives,” Walker says. ”So they tell you, `I did it to get a scholarship.` You have a scholarship, but how is that going to prepare you to live the rest of your life if you`re missing all these developmental needs? At age 18 they just haven`t grown up. Then that pattern will repeat itself in college, (as they get ready) for the pros. At what point do these people grow up?
”There are a lot of stories about pro athletes who are children inside. They`re 35 years old and they have nothing, no real inner personality because everything in their lives has been geared to one thing.”
Brenda Whitesell, the basketball and softball coach at Hinsdale South High School, encourages her athletes to participate in as many sports as they can. She and Marable often have been at odds over the question of specialization and scholarships.
”They tell kids so often that to be the best they`re going to be or to get a scholarship, specialization is the only way, and that`s not so,” says Whitesell, who played volleyball, basketball and softball at Indiana State University in Terre Haute in the mid-1970s.
Hinsdale South seniors Claudine Borkovec, Becky Blamer and Cherie Ruta played volleyball, basketball and softball throughout high school. Marable believes all three would have earned volleyball scholarships from either Division I or Division II schools if they had specialized. Whitesell maintains they are examples of athletes who would have forfeited their chances to fully develop in other sports by specializing. Ruta has a combined volleyball-softball scholarship from Lewis University in Romeoville. Blamer has earned a basketball scholarship from Winona State University in Minnesota. Borkovec, despite being considered one of the best all-around female athletes in the Chicago area, had no scholarship offers as of mid-May.
Compounding the problem is the fact that the growth rates of adolescents are so variable that proficiency in a sport could change significantly during the four years of high school. Dr. Jay Berkelhamer, chief of the general pediatrics group at the University of Chicago Medical Center, says that boys generally reach adult height at age 15 or 16, but ”some boys don`t reach it until age 20.” Girls generally reach adult height at 14, but some girls, he says, ”may continue to grow up till age 18 or 19.
”There is a wide range of normalcy in a child`s development,”
Berkelhamer adds. ”Some kids acquire skills early, and some acquire them later. Their size, their strength, their agility really don`t come at a uniform rate. We have to be really open to the notion that there are late bloomers.”
Borkovec and Blamer agonized over their decisions, showing that the strains are just as great on those who choose not to specialize as on those who do.
”Sometimes I feel it (specializing) would have been the smart thing to do because maybe I could get a big scholarship,” Blamer says.
”I was thinking, `What if I don`t get a scholarship?` ” Borkovec says.
”But what stuck in my mind was, `What if I give up one (sport) and I don`t get anything out of it?` ”
The psychological damage that could result from the turmoil and anxiety over a decision to specialize in one sport or not is an unexplored area. Brenda Jo Bredemeier, a sports psychologist at the University of California at Berkeley, says the potential for personal devastation for someone who has made the sacrifice and failed to be compensated for it is a valid concern. She sees the trend toward specialization in sport as an outgrowth of our society`s preoccupation with a winner-take-all attitude.
”I think it is in response to extreme pressures placed on kids to be the very best they can,” Bredemeier says. ”There`s such a strong achievement orientation to our society. There`s a real emphasis on outcome and on who`s the best, not only in school but in the country and in the world. You see Olympic gold medal winners who aren`t satisfied because they didn`t set a world record. There`s such a strong emphasis on product rather than on process. One person comes out on top, and everyone else loses. What happens to the person who does not achieve success after all that?”
John Foley, the St. Rita senior considered by many to be the best high school linebacker in the country, is an example of an athlete who has known only success from an early age. As a 2d grader, he played on his grammar school team against 6th graders. He will play for Notre Dame this fall.
”I never thought about not succeeding in football,” he says.
Such self-confidence is common to most great athletes, the mental toughness being part of the reason they reach levels of achievement beyond those of others with equal physical skills. That characteristic, however, can prove to be a double-edged sword, one that could cut deeply if the potential star never shines as brightly as anticipated.
”The Foleys and those kinds of kids always come out in the papers, but how many Foleys are there out there?” Moyzis of St. Rita says. ”We have John Foley, an All-America player who can go to any school he wants. I think kids see that, and they want to be like that.”
Foley, 19, began playing football in 2d grade. By the time he was a 6th-grader, he had set definite goals for himself.
”My goal was to be the best football player in the nation,” he says.
As a 7th-grader, he dropped basketball. As an 8th-grader, he also dropped baseball. ”In 6th grade, I found out football was my game and I thought, `I`m going to have to cut down on (other) sports.` And that`s what I did,” Foley says. ”In 8th grade, I just played football because I wanted to train for high school football. I wanted to lift. My first two years of high school I didn`t even go out with girls.”
Foley did run track his first two years of high school to increase his speed for football but then gave that up because it interfered with a weight- lifting schedule that had him working out four days a week, four hours a day. Foley, who admits he is obsessed with football and is a weight-lifting fanatic, has transformed himself from a 6-foot, 135-pound 8th-grader to the 6- foot-5, 240-pound high school senior he is today.
”In 8th grade my goal was to be the best high school player,” he says.
”Now it`s to be the best college player and (after college) a first-round draft choice.”
He says all the sacrifices have been worth it. There is, he says, no other way to be successful.
”Today you can be all-state, All-America; you can be on television, be in the newspaper and all that,” he says. ”I looked at that and I said, `Holy cow, I can do that.` Now with all the hype, you want to do it. You look at your idols and you want to do that.
”I had a friend a few years ago who could have been a tremendous football player but wasn`t because he (also) played basketball. I looked at that and I said, `I never want that to happen to me.` ”
Moyzis has coached baseball for 10 years at St. Rita. He believes the burden of living up to star billing, the fear of not reaching the potential prescribed for them prompts athletes to specialize.
”We categorize kids as great players when they are still freshmen and sophomores in high school. We don`t give them a chance to develop,” Moyzis says. ”In baseball I think we`re categorizing kids as stars at 8, 10, 11 years old, and those kids` eyesight and hand-eye coordination are not even fully developed at that age.
”When a kid finds out he`s not being successful enough, he keeps going after it. That`s when he turns away (from other sports). Then he puts all his eggs in one basket. And then if he doesn`t make it, he feels like a failure. And he`s not a failure.”
”The real hype to specialize–the summer leagues, the nationally known camps, the weight-lifting centers, the health spas–all these things developed in the last 8 to 10 years,” Basarich says. ”We were saying, `There`s no reason why this athlete can`t be in great shape, no reason why he can`t bench- press a million pounds.
”All this happened because we as coaches, with our zest and our egos, we demanded it. Therefore, the pressure has been self-inflicted, and then it`s being put on the parents and the athletes. It`s a vicious circle.”
Basarich believes coaches have always been under pressure to win. The difference in the last decade, he says, is that the pressure is now heightened by the emphasis on year-round play. Marable agrees.
”As a coach, you can say all you want that you`re not going to put pressure on the athletes (to specialize), but in the end it`s your entire program that gets left behind if those opportunities are not presented to the athletes,” Marable says.
”You`ve got to have success; that`s your reward,” says Bob Bradshaw, the football coach for 17 years at Woodstock High School. He knows how difficult it is to avoid putting pressure on the athletes, to strike the proper balance between what`s best for the team and what`s best for the individual.
In 1983 Bradshaw`s team won the Class 4-A state football championship. His son, Greg, played quarterback on that team, earning all-state honors. His senior year at Woodstock, Greg also was all-conference in basketball and baseball and earned a football scholarship to Northwestern University, where he is a sophomore. That year he finished second to Reno in the voting for The Tribune`s Athlete of the Year. The rewards he reaped for participating in three sports were ample. He says he never considered dropping any of them, not even in the summer, when the demands upon his time were almost overwhelming.
”There is so much going on in the summer–baseball leagues, basketball leagues, passing leagues,” Greg says. ”They all want you. The football coach tells you he wants you to work out and lift everyday. Or, in my case, because I was a quarterback, to throw everyday. And the basketball coach wants you to come to the gym everyday and shoot baskets. And the baseball coach wants you to play as many games as you can.”
As a father, Bradshaw was concerned about his son being pulled in too many directions, and he could see the pressure that was applied, albeit unintentionally. But as a coach he reluctantly contributed to that pressure.
”I could feel the pressure on him,” Bradshaw says. ”He had to run from one thing to another and he had to make so many choices: `Should I go to passing league tonight or the basketball game?`
”But as a coach, when I go to the passing league and my quarterback isn`t there, it doesn`t give me a good feeling. As long as everyone else is doing it, I`m going to make sure I`m not outhustled.”
There are no statistics kept by the IHSA or the National Federation of State High School Associations on the number of three-sport high school athletes. The NCAA does not keep such statistics on the college level, either. Officials at all three organizations, however, said that if such statistics had been kept through the years, they would show a decline in multisport participation.
Despite the decline, there are still athletes who successfully compete in more than one sport without incurring severe penalties. Those blessed with exceptional athletic skills or those fortunate enough to attend a school with a strong tradition of multisport participation may be shielded from some of the pressures that force specialization.
In 1983, his senior year at Oak Park-River Forest High School, Eric Kumerow was all-state in football and basketball and won the first Tribune Athlete of the Year award.
Kumerow recalls that he did not play baseball his junior year because
”baseball never was my favorite sport.” The next year, six games into the season, he decided to play baseball again. He hit .330 with a .600 slugging percentage and made only three errors at first base. Oak Park-River Forest baseball coach Jack Kaiser said at the time that Kumerow could have played professional baseball.
Kumerow, 20, is a starting outside linebacker for Ohio State University, where he will be a junior this fall.
Kent Graham, like Kumerow before him, is being told he has collegiate potential in football, basketball and baseball. He is only a junior at Wheaton North High School. The 6-foot-5 220-pounder could be all-state in all three sports next year; he`s that good. One collegiate scouting report lists him as one of the top quarterback prospects in the nation for next season. Illinois, UCLA, Notre Dame and Michigan, among others, have already expressed an interest in him.
As a basketball forward, he led his team to the Class AA supersectionals this past season and was voted the No. 1 player in his conference. Several major league scouts are following his progress in baseball.
Graham, 17, says he is not confused and does not feel pressured. He has been advised by coaches at Wheaton North to keep his options open until the last possible moment, which is what he intends to do.
”Since I was growing up, I`ve wanted to be the best I could be in all of them,” Graham says. ”All my brothers and my brothers` friends have been three-sport athletes.”
Wheaton North football coach Jim Rexilius can rattle off a long list of former Falcon football stars, including Graham`s brothers, Dan and Russ, who each played more than one sport in high school. The most prominent example is Chuck Long, the quarterback who led the University of Iowa to the Rose Bowl this past season and was second in the voting for the Heisman Trophy.
”Our feeling is that if a kid is good enough to go to college on a scholarship, he can get it and still play three sports,” Rexilius says.
”That`s been our policy since I`ve been here (1968). I think that`s why our total athletic program is strong. I practically insist that our football players play a second sport.
”In 1984 we did a survey that showed we had 37 kids playing some type of football, Division I to Division III, and I would say all of them played at least a second sport. I think kids are nuts if they specialize, and if we as coaches push it, we`re hurting the kids.”
”Sometimes you see the hellacious disappointment and a lot of blame pushed around if a guy doesn`t get what he wants,” says Dennis Green, former head football coach at Northwestern University. ”The resentment stems from their doing all they thought they were expected to do since their freshman year and believing that if they did it, they would get a scholarship. It doesn`t work that way. Success in college is totally different, and it`s not guaranteed.”
As young athletes feel intensifying pressures to excel, struggle with growing time demands and increasingly covet tangible rewards, the old axiom that high school sports should be played for fun seems to be more and more a naive notion.
”It may be naive, Jim Pitts of Northwestern says, ”but it`s not wrong.”
