By Nate Leskovic
Times Staff
7/10/08

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“In the hiring process we talk about making sure the athletes are good students,” Drottar says, adding that around 60 percent of coaches are teachers themselves.
Gormley says the school department puts as much work into hiring coaches as it does teachers. “It’s one more person looking out for them,” she says.
Steve Traister, athletic director and football coach, actively monitors the grades of his students. He says coaches have an incentive to keep track so they don’t lose players due to ineligibility. State law bars students who fail more than two classes from playing sports in the following term.
Football players have to turn in progress reports from teachers both before and after the regular half-term reports come out. The first term ends just before the big Thanksgiving game against Braintree, and a failing student could end up on the sidelines.
Traister says he has struggling students spend time in study halls before and after practices. He gets in touch with teachers to check up on them. Unsatisfactory reports could trigger extra running punishment at practices or even cuts in playing time.
“You’re a student-athlete first and the word ‘student’ is at the front of that,” he says, adding that teachers tell him how some of their students perform better the terms they are on teams. “Coaches keep players more focused and more structured with their time management. When they’re not doing sports they are free to do whatever they want to do, and sometimes they aren’t productive.”
Drottar says it’s common for teachers to get in touch with coaches as well, “just to put that extra encouragement on a student.”
There are no official requirements of coaches to monitor their students’ grades, though it does factor into evaluations according to Drottar. Traister says the athletic department is in the process of setting up regular coach evaluations.
Traister says freshman football coach Bill Donovan has mandatory study halls for his players. Gormley says boys’ hockey coach Paul Noonan is often seen in her office checking up on grades or advocating for his students.
Baseball coach Ted Curley, a special needs teacher in Boston, says athletics are part of education.
“Sports is a fun thing, but the books are part of the deal,” he says. “Not many are going to the pros.”
Curley starts checking up on his players in the fall to identify who is at risk and sometimes has them turn in progress reports. He says he tells his students “from day one” that all they need is a note from a teacher to be excused or come late to any practice or game.
“We tell them, ‘please seek us out, we want to help you out,’” he says. “I’ve had some kids that I feel sports has been a lifesaver for. Kids right on the edge of trying this or that, maybe drugs. When they know that someone is monitoring and cares, they put in a little more effort.”
“The discipline involved in athletics is very comparable to what you need to be a good student,” says Drottar. “When we look at some of our academically strong students, a lot of those kids are two- and three-sport athletes. When students get a chance to express their passion, they do better.”
Girls’ lacrosse coach Barbara Kelley, a history teacher at the high school, says 90 percent of her students make the honor roll and this year nine of 11 juniors and seniors were in the National Honor Society. She says her team has developed a culture of academic success.
“I’ve noticed the kids themselves set the examples for the younger players,” she says. “If you are an incoming freshman, your first contact with the high school is with your fellow teammates. If you hear them talking about (the importance of schoolwork) the message is sent that it’s something you want.”
Drottar says out of the many students who play sports each year, only about four or five end up on the ineligible list. Traister says often it is the coaches who deserve gratitude.
“A lot of times (students) will take to a coach more than a teacher or even their parents because they’re doing something they want to do and that person is mentoring them through that,” he says.