When I first started school we were a consolidated elementary and high school. There weren't very many of us. About 30 kids in total between the two. We still had a high school football team and a basketball team and a baseball team though. We still had cheerleaders. We were taught the school "fight song", which was based on the Notre Dame University fight song. Every school had their own fight song and their own mascot. Since my town was established along the railroad, our team was called the High-Liners. Hung high on the walls of the gymnasium were boards carrying the record of wins in each sport announcing the last time they won the state championship. School athletes wore letterman jackets with the school colors and stitched on letters representing which sports they took part in. In the hall were cases of trophies the school teams had won. Here are the words to our fight song:
Cheer, cheer for old Donny high,
We fight for victory, to do or die
When you see white and maroon,
You know it's Donny's victory soon
We never falter, we never fail
Our song is ringing o'er hill and dale...
School athletes were treated as young gods, and cheerleaders were goddesses. When American schools have a prom or homecoming dance it was almost cliché for the captain of the football team and the head cheerleader to be crowned king and queen of the dance. Homecoming was the first home game of the season. Schools would celebrate homecoming week with themed days, things like cross-dressing one day and everybody wearing the school colors the next. We had "pep rallies" in which everyone was encouraged to cheer on the school team while the cheerleaders and the band put on a show. In bigger schools in recent years these things have become quite a production in and of themselves. Often there are parades with floats on the main street and the whole town comes out for it.
Of course, this has a dark side. High school athletes don't have to study. The school itself makes sure they don't have to by fixing their grades for them. High school sports are a money-maker for the schools, after all. What it teaches the athletes is that they are the elite and that the usual rules don't apply to them. Academically they get a free ride. They are also free from the consequences of any wrongdoing. When they are caught drinking or doing drugs or beating up their girlfriends or sexually assaulting someone, it's often swept under the rug because they're too valuable to the school to punish. Hazing is a common feature of high school sports in America. I remember more than once hearing about a town where the entire basketball team or football team had been caught drinking at a party underage and there were no consequences because punishing them all would cost the school their chance at the state championships.
On the other hand, school sports are physically punishing for the players. We're coming to understand that football, for example, leads to a lot of concussions and traumatic brain injuries from impact. A lot of high school athletes get injured in ways that stay with them for life during their school years. Later these injuries are seen as a badge of honor as they get older. The academic free ride through high school doesn't have to end either. Often at high school games there are recruiters from universities looking for athletes to add to their teams. If a high school athlete is scouted to a university, their education is paid for and they still don't have to do the coursework. The professors and administration make sure of it. They leave university with degrees that they never had to do any work for, and they got treated like gods throughout their formative years. And it doesn't end there. At the university level they have scouts for professional teams looking for players to recruit. Most college athletes don't go on to become professional athletes. Instead they become lawyers or important men in their communities. All essentially without the benefit of an education because they skated through without having to learn anything. It might surprise a lot of people outside the US how many of our local and state elected officials are products of this system. It's almost like their reward for surviving their years of acting as gladiators.
If you attend a high school sports event you will see some interesting behavior from the fans too. The rivalries to them are almost life and death. You'll see parents and teachers screaming maledictions at the opposing team (they're still just kids, but whatever) and working themselves up into a frenzy of "team spirit". It's honestly a little scary how carried away they get with their support. But this is how Americans learn to think in terms of "us and them". Our team is the best and the other team are threatening their supremacy. This gets carried over into everything. It's why people in America treat political parties the way they do. They think of it in terms of sports teams. It's also where our hyper-competitive beliefs come from. In America you learn that you are either a winner or a loser. You're part of the pack or you're not. There is no in-between. The only thing that matters is winning at all costs. If you want to understand this part of the American mentality, it's drummed into us very young.
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