Private school sports...

I'm wondering if you might want to break this down a little more, forex:

Do you need religious private or just private?

Urban or rural?

Both things change the answer, even in my tiny neck of the woods.

My son goes to a Lutheran high school. They're conference contains public schools. It's based on region, not religion.

Why not just pick a few private schools in the Seattle area, check out their websites and find out for real? Probably help give you ideas for setting and such with photos and background as well.

You can probably find the facts online, for Seattle area. BUT you may not want them for a work of fiction.

Forex: Brighton, in Seattle, competes in a middle school league that includes both secular and non-secular schools. (I have a cousin with a kid there.)

Examples here in Illinois, the local Catholic School plays some sports against local public schools, other sports against the other Catholic schools in the region.

The local Christian School only plays other Christian schools in the south end of the state.

IMSA (Illinois Math and Science Academy - private school) competes in something called the NAC - Northeastern Athletic Conference which is mostly religious private schools, but not all.)

Oops. You said High School. Sorry.

Seattle Academy

Seattle Prep (Christian School)


The "Google Search" was: Seattle Private High Schools

That got me a list, then a click through on the schools got me a link to the athletics.

Again, for a work of fiction, you may or may not want to be too exact in your usage.

In TN I went to a private Catholic School. In football it depends on what divison you are in. My high school was in a different divison from some of the other schools because they gave their athlets scholarships. We were in Division 2 double A. We didn't play some of the other nearby private schools, but most of them. We played other Catholic schools, other private schools, and some public.

Here is a private school's athletic program in the Seattle area.

http://www.seattleacademy.org/theprogram_athletics_overview.html

We weren't large enough to have a football team, but we had an amazing soccer team*. Otherwise, just basketball.

We played religious schools in the area and within drives under an hour or so. We did play two public high schools, but we always lost tremendously. Our talent pool wasn't large at all, being such a small school. It was great practice, though!

*eta - we only had a male soccer team, but we had at least one girl on there each year. Our soccer program was solid, so we did play many more public schools in that sport.

I went to a private school in Florida. We were Double A, which IIRC, is based on size. Since public schools tended to be bigger, we often played other private schools. Our soccer team was one of the best Double A teams in the state. We had basketball and track (my sport, I could run in circles). It was like what Belle described.

I think it depends on the division of the school's program. Private schools can play public schools, depending on the size of the school, but some private schools have limited athletic programs...or they only play other small private schools.

I think basketball, soccer, and track are fairly common - no matter the size. Football only for the bigger schools. Depending on the type of school you have, think about their funds, social status, etc. Maybe golf or tennis would be present. My private high school had a bowling league (though it was a bit of a joke - haha!) But if it's set in Seattle, you might have some unique things like fencing or fringe competitions.

Good luck!

MttStrn said:

Is there anyone here who has experience in a private high school and what sports are like there? Do they play other schools? If so, is it other private schools? What are the common sports? Any help is greatly appreciated.

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The girls played hockey and netball, and did athletics in the summer.

The boys played rugby and cricket, but never football.

We did a lot of feild sports, running being very popular, in addition we had swimming for all students and we had a showjumping team (despite the fact that the school did not have the facilities for horse riding)

In terms of competition, we competed against each other and against other schools. For most sports there are various leagues you can enter - for instance, the Schools Cup is for rugby and has a huge following and is televised each year.

We played against all sorts of schools. Any school with a team can enter the leagues and friendly competitions are worked out between schools.

We did not have a pool, so no swimming team. I believe this is mainly because there was a very popular and expensive raquetball club that the majority of the students were members of. They swam there

I went to a secular private school, and we mostly played other private schools. It's mostly based on size. With the larger pool of talent to draw from, most big public schools would've killed us.

I currently go to a north eastern secular private high school. We play both private and public schools, mostly based on region. County lines are also very important. We are on the edge of a county but tend to only play schools in that county conference. We also play a few out of season games against schools not in our conferences but that are a good match for us (or old rivals). There are also private school conferences, which often only consist of a tournament, that we participate in. We usually participate in both the public and private conferences. This could differ depending on the school (my private middle school did things differently) but that's how most private schools seem to do things here. I'd suggest looking up some Seattle conferences for some supplementary information.

As for what sports we participate in, it really depends on facilities. My school has a swimming team because we have a pool, but some schools will go off campus to practice and have home meets (my middle school did this for cross country). We play most standard sports, but also have a few rarer ones. For example we have a fencing and golf team (and we used to have skiing). Tennis and lacrosse are pretty big where I go. It really depends on the size of the school. A lot of private schools provide a large number of different teams for a relatively small student body. Because we have such small numbers of students, my school (and many others in the area) have no cut policies for all teams. Anyone can join, but varsity status and play time is based on skill. A lot of these schools have sports programs fed into by middle schools (my school contains both a middle and high school, but even with a lone high school many people who attend come from private middle schools) where playing a sport each season is often mandatory. Each school tends to have a few good teams but overall small numbers seem to hinder most private schools in excelling at a large number of sports (too small of a talent pool). Many schools also don't stress athletics as much as academics (though that really depends on the culture of the school).

One thing you should be mindful of is that (at least in the north east) there will always be the same number of girls teams as boys teams. Some sports are called co-ed (even if girls effectively don't get to play or don't join anyways (but this can be true for boys to (ex. when I played volleyball, most meets were for girls only) to maintain this rule (though co-ed type teams are mostly in middle school). Sometimes boys and girls teams will practice together depending on the sport to some extent (ex. track and fencing) or not at all. Another thing to note is that many private high schools (yet again, I'm speaking from an east coast perspective) don't have cheerleaders. It really depends on the school. From a social perspective, being a star athlete is not a huge deal (but I go to a more academically minded school). This is especially true if the sport you excel at is not the most popular or the team is generally bad. We have nationally and internationally rated fencers and swimmers at my school (we even sent a soccer player to the World Cup in South Africa in the lower age tournament), but while people are aware of these accomplishments it doesn't really ensure any popularity. But that factor will all depend on the type of school you have and it's culture. My school is academically oriented with focus on the arts as well as athletics, which take a back seat to general learning. Sports are often seen as a great way to build a college application, enticing people to stay with a sport they don't really care about and don't put much effort into.

Sorry for the long and repetitive post. If you have any other questions about private school sports, or private schools in general, please feel free to message me.

If you would like to see what a fairly small (grades 6-12, 420 students) Episcopalian boarding/day school can do in sports, take a look at the website of Shattuck-St. Mary's in Faribault, MN. Six hockey teams (4 boys, 2 girls), four soccer teams (2 boys, 2 girls), a figure skating program, three ice arenas (two enclosed, one open), a gigantic inflated sports dome... why, there's no end to it. Needless to say the school dropped out of the state athletic league years ago. The teams play 60 or 70-game seasons all over the USA and Canada. (The school also just started a golf program.)

My HS had Football, Wrestling, Basketball, Golf, Baseball, Track & Field, Bowling and maybe Soccer. Each sport had different leagues that we'd compete in depending upon a variety of factors. As Kuwi pointed out, the population of students to draw upon is a big factor so a small school competing against a big school in a team sport is often unbalanced. If your team has 15 players for football, but your opponent has 90, they can simply send wave after wave (strings) of fresh rested players while yours get ground down. For most of the team sports, we competed with similarly sized schools from the public ssytem and also against other local parochial schools. For things like wrestling, we could compete against larger schools because it's more like a team of individuals rather than a cohesive team.