Towards the end of the 2017-2018 North St Paul High school hockey season, players were informed that the coaches have resigned their position from the staff. At that point in-time, the returning players for the 2018-2019 sean began to realize that of right now, they had no coaches for the next season, as well as nearly 20 seniors leaving. They begin to question if there will be a team next year and if it will be worth playing. I begin to question, why is participation in sports dropping at North High?

Joey Kearn, a student and high school hockey player at North believes that, “kids are becoming lazy and not making good decisions with their lives taking them away from sports. Or cannot get good enough grades to play.”

When I asked if Kearn had ever experience a reduction in players for any sports that he has played, he responded with “Yes! Hockey.” Joey claims that, “there really isn’t enough talent to make a competitive team next year, because of the lack of numbers.” He also told us if he had a say in the situation, what he would do. “Make sports cheaper in youth programs, so more kids can play. Also to promote sports at North as much as we can.”

Not only are numbers low for the hockey program at North but also for the volleyball team. Yaiza Franco, a North St. Paul varsity volleyball player claims that, “our demographics at North High are very different than many schools and I think a lot of kids cannot afford sports. Also, I feel school spirit is very low at North so no one wants to represent their school.”

I asked Yaiza if she has experienced any low amounts of numbers for any sports that she plays for? Her response was with the North High volleyball program. “This year for high school volleyball at North, tryout numbers were low and we had to invite middle schoolers to play on the freshman teams.”

Another student from North High, Bao-Phong Nguyen, has also had experience with a loss in numbers for basketball at North High. “We need to recruit people when they’re young and in middle school. We need to tell them to come to North so they can play sports for us. Also, the reduction of players is hurting our players because we don’t have enough people to have full teams.”

Bao-Phong played basketball for North this year and he shared his experience. “I’m b-squad for basketball, we didn’t have enough sophomores this year because everyone was hurt or had bad grades, so we had to bring up freshman to play with us.”

Nguyen also said that if he had a say in how North should fix this problem he would, “have it be so that’s there’s less teams, or go and recruit more players to play for us.”