Goals and Policies of our Athletics Program
Hello ANCS families,
The Athletics program at the Middle Campus provides opportunities for students to push themselves and to grow as individuals outside of the classroom. While we have indeed won many games and multiple championships over the course of the years, we measure the success of our program in more than just wins and losses. The goals of our Athletics program are:
- Fostering Resilience, Growth, and Sportsmanship amongst Student-Athletes – Competing in sports in middle school is a privilege. It also comes with great responsibility.
- Students need to manage their time, complete their school work, and adhere to our Guiding Principles from a behavioral standpoint if they are going to play a sport at ANCS.
- Students also learn that the opportunity to play is earned. Some students will be cut, some students may not play much, and this is all a part of playing sports. Things may not always go one’s way, however it’s important that we help our students be resilient while also displaying good sportsmanship. Sports offer yet another opportunity for students to learn how to bounce back as they receive feedback about their performance in games, practices, and in the classroom.
- Representing the school well is important and quality sportsmanship is a means of both Celebrating our individual and collective successes, and Resolving Conflict in a thoughtful, peaceful, and meaningful way.
- We expect our parents to model respect in their treatment of coaches, officials (referees, umpires, athletic directors, security officers, and other staff), fans of other teams, etc., as it is important for all of us to set a positive example for our children to follow.
- Safe Participation – We require medical clearance via athletics physical forms for participation in order to make sure it is safe for student athletes to play sports. Additionally, we remain mindful of safety issues related to age differences. The range of physicality from 6th to 8th grade can be vast, so we keep this range in mind from a safety perspective with respect to the participation of various athletes, and in consideration of the sports that they play.
- Winning – It is our goal to be competitive. We want to compete and we want to win. However, we will do so while staying mindful of the goals of the Athletics program and adhering to our Guiding Principles.
- Access to the Opportunity to Play Sports – The opportunity to play sports in middle school can greatly enhance a student’s experience at the Middle Campus. Additionally, for some students, playing sports at the Middle Campus is the main opportunity that they can have to play sports at all. While there are some sports that have cuts (large teams can make practices unwieldy, limiting opportunities for players to be coached, and making the experience bad for everyone), we want to provide as many opportunities as possible for our middle school students to play sports in order to provide access.
In light of these goals, and after trying some different things last year with respect to tryouts, I would like to clarify our policy regarding participation in sports. Only students at the Middle Campus may try out for athletic teams. Exceptions will be made for 5th graders only when there are minimal safety concerns for 5th graders participating in a given sport, and when lower interest amongst our 6th-8th graders opens up opportunities for 5th graders to participate. Over the last several years, this has most often applied to girls’ basketball, girls’ soccer, and girls’ ultimate frisbee. If we are opening up a sport to participation from 5th graders we will reach out via the Courier prior to the tryout season for a given sport. The rationale behind this participation policy has been driven by both our Safety and our Access goals for our Athletics program.
If you have any questions about the goals and participation policies of our Athletics program please reach out to Mr. Sanders (MC Principal; msanders@atlncs.org). If you have any other questions about sports please reach out to our Athletic Director Detric Prather (dprather@atlncs.org).
We look forward to another successful year of sports this year.
Kind regards,
Mark