All my life, I've been trying to do just that. When my long uphill sidling put, meant for a foot to the left, went a foot to the right for a birdie, my companion, a man who wasted few shots or words said nothing for a long while. I have never in the thick of the football-event. Big-time athletics in American schools, colleges and universities are a good thing and a bad thing. Thousands on thousands of youths, thirteen to seventeen, are in high school, and by early winter, their studies demanding though not commanding, students need an outlet.
Basketball fills the bill.
It makes the school one as nothing else does, and it helps players and the whole school to be fair winners, good losers, and does the community much good. Disvalues are associated with sport. Application to algebra, history and French suffers. So far as study is concerned, it would be better if athletics and teams and team spirit, all of them good things, had never been born. Study-wise, nearly all boys suffer and the school suffers.