Column: Do Private Schools Have an Advantage?

In almost 40 years of covering Section 1 high school sports, I have probably heard it 400 times – private schools have an unfair advantage.

Demographically, they can draw from a wider range than public high schools. They have greater financial resources. They can recruit. The list goes on and on.

It goes all the way back to when I first started my career, when Poughkeepsie-based Our Lady of Lourdes High School was winning nine state championships in the 1980s and 90s in girls basketball.

Now, the New York State Public High School Athletic Association is considering a drastic change. A vote was scheduled for Friday, April 24, to separate private schools from competing for sectional and state championships against public schools. (See story at the end of this column.)

I don’t like this idea.

Who are we to prevent parents from paying a tuition for a better education or better facilities for their children?

This also opens the state up to litigation for discriminatory lawsuits.

Plus, when it comes to athletics, whatever happened to best-on-best? Not to mention the fact that I read that private schools have won only three of 28 Section 1 championships in the fall and winter.

Nope, I don’t like this at all.

We already separate schools by enrollment size. Sometimes, the state even elevates some schools to a higher classification for competitive reasons. That alone has problems when you force a school to play in a higher classification for a sport like football, where the school would normally be two or three sizes lower based on enrollment. Now you’re talking about endangering our children.

Perhaps the state can set up a separate tournament after the fact, in which the individual-enrollment-size winners meet.

Or perhaps they can leave things the way they are.

Rich Thomaselli is a longtime sports reporter in the Hudson Valley, and currently covers Putnam County. He can be reached at rich.thomaselli@gmail.com.

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The NYS Public High School Athletic Association was scheduled to vote Friday on whether private schools should be able to compete for sectional and state championships. That means schools like Ursuline, Leffell School, Keio Academy, and Albertus Magnus compete for titles in their own classifications. It is something that has been discussed for decades among fans, athletes, and administrators.

A bill proposed last year to create a separate competition for private schools never made to a vote.