Sports

The Public Schools Athletic league (PSAL) is not known for making great decisions. After video evidence proved that the score of the playoff game in which the Runnin’ Rebels, Stuyvesant’s boys’ varsity basketball team, got eliminated in was in fact 40-40, the PSAL refused to hear the appeal. Last spring, when the baseball team was moving its home field to Pier 40, the PSAL forced it to pay $11,000 for a new pitchers’ mound. It continued this tradition of bad judgment late this July, when it decided to make double dutch a bona fide varsity spring sport.

Double dutch is a playground game where two people stand 10 to 15 feet away from each other and spin jump ropes in opposite directions while others try to jump in between the ropes. That’s right: the city is now sanctioning competitive jump roping. While they’re at it, the PSAL ought to add competitive hula hooping and hopscotch as well.

It is true that the reasoning behind the decision to add double dutch, a particularly popular activity amongst girls, is well-intentioned. Shani Newsome, the double dutch coach at Brooklyn’s Bedford Academy High School, explained that the addition will encourage girls to participate in an official sport. “Double dutch is a sport that gets girls involved, no matter what their condition is,” she said to the Associated Press. “It’s something that builds stamina.” Other positives are that there is free gym space in spring, and that this activity is quite inexpensive. Nevertheless, this is not the right thing for the PSAL to organize.

Another sport, competitive cheerleading, is very popular amongst girls but still has not been made official by the PSAL. While Stuyvesant and many other public schools have cheerleading squads, they have to leave the city to enter competitions. A sport like this that is already well established in schools should not be passed over for a street yard game.

If cheerleading was to be instated as a spring sport, as double dutch is now, it would not conflict with the squad’s existing schedule which consists of cheering on the football and basketball teams during the fall and winter, respectively.

In addition, becoming an official PSAL sport would greatly ease the cheerleading squad’s financial burden. They do not receive city funding like official teams do. Currently, they pay for their coach, transportation and tournaments’ entry fees through a combination of the school’s money and fundraising.

But instead of the plausible choice of cheerleading, the PSAL decided to take on the risky endeavor of becoming the nation’s first league to sponsor a double dutch program.

If this ends up being a popular sport, I’ll applaud the PSAL. But if, as I predict, the novelty wears off and the number of participants starts to dwindle, the PSAL can only look back and realize that cheerleading would have been a more proper sport to add.