High-school sports command enormous attention in American society In many cases, school athletics dictate the morale of an entire community. With the public’s mounting distrust of major professional and college sports, high schools are, to many the last bastion of the unadulterated competitive spirit.

Several probing cultural studies, nonetheless, illuminate the world of high-school athletics. The documentary Hoop Dreams (1994) follows two promising young basketball players and their NBA aspirations. For some inner-city African American males, basketball seems to represent the road out of poverty But, as the film poignantly illustrates, those who are talented and lucky enough to receive scholarships to college are few. The number able to make a living playing the sport they love is minuscule.

H.G. Bissinger’s Friday Nïght Lights (1991), by contrast, chronicles the 1988 football season of the Permian High School Panthers in Odessa, Texas, where every Friday night community members cheer the team with religious zeal. Bissinger’s study shows how the outcome of each game has an impact seemingly disproportionate to its importance: coaches face “For Sale” signs placed on their lawns following a loss against a rival. This devotion was only exacerbated, Bissinger suggests, by the 1980s collapse of the oil industry in Texas. A similar view pervades All the Right Moυes (1983), which spotlighted a fictional Pennsylvania high-school football program. Here, a heartbreaking loss to a rival also spawns unreasonable, disturbing reactions from fans, players and coaches.

Clearly enormous external pressure weighs on certain high-school athletes.

But not all high-school athletes receive this attention. Until recently the opposite was true for girls. This trend is slowly changing, due to legal requirements of Title IX at the college level and the popularity of college and professional leagues, including women’s soccer, vitalized by the 1998 World Cup. Other programs—gymnastics, martial arts, even wrestling—are eclipsed by the major sports—football, basketball and baseball.

Some alternatives are nonetheless associated with affluence. Golf and certain racquet sports have a long tradition of upper-class participation; such games require expensive equipment and/or unusual venues, and private (or prep) schools have more resources.

Nevertheless, some teams are also found at public schools. Lacrosse, squash and crew (rowing) are associated with white upper-middle class institutions. Swimming has also emerged at schools with special facilities.

Regardless of class, students who participate in high-school athletics are often characterized as “jocks,” a largely negative term suggesting limited intelligence (in spite of presidential candidate Bill Bradley’s coining of “intellectual jock” to describe himself). The attention paid to the student athletes often makes them popular and may give them what some see as excessive power over the lives of others in the school. This, in turn, has led to resentment, painfully evident in Colorado’s Columbine High School shootings, where student killers targeted several athletic stars. For all its faults, though, highschool sport is one of America’s most cherished institutions, and participation in athletic programs continues to be encouraged by parents and administrators alike.