Sports are a very popular thing in Hawthorne.

There are a total of 6 baseball fields, 6 soccer fields, 3 football fields, 3 different basketball teams, and even a hockey rink. In the past decade we have had most sports teams full and tryouts were necessary because there were just too many kids. But in the more recent years Hawthorne has had less and less kids trying out from the younger grades.

It seems as if most of the remaining athletes are at least in their second year of high school.

The first time I started to realize this was in 2019, at my last home game for Saint Anthony’s CYO program. Our team was the last CYO team that had enough players to actually participate. It is now 2021 and they still have not had another team since. There were only two students that attended St. Anthony’s school and played basketball, therefore they had no choice but to join our team, (in years prior there was always a school team and a CYO team that were separated.)

More recently the Hawthorne Football team this year had no freshman players in the beginning of the year. One student in the freshman class joined late, but it is still clear evidence that the number of athletes are decreasing in the lower grades. A similar thing is happening with middle school students. Although the Cubs have a full football team, most of the kids that play have their eyes set on different schools after graduation.

Or this another reason for this decline?

Beyond school choice, kids in the younger grades might enjoy staying inside playing video games or watching television rather than going to a practice or a game. It could also be that kids do not want to play a sport at a competitive level.

The Boys and Girls Club is a perfect example of this. In the 8th grade there were so many kids that signed up for the boys and girls club basketball and about 90% of the kids didn’t even try out for the school team. Fun is always a reason to get involved in sports but the number of people just playing for fun seems to be increasing and decreasing at the same time.

More people are playing for fun instead of playing competitively and the people that previously were just playing for fun stopped playing in general. Over the course of 1 year I have already had four friends quit basketball. This is an ongoing issue happening throughout Hawthorne schools and maybe we should start to wonder why.