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September 29, 2013 12:00 AM
"; aryZooms[imgCounter] = "javascript: NewWindow(870,625,window.document.location+'&Template=photos&img="+imgCounter+"')";WAREHAM ? There's more to Wareham High School athletics than the triumphant boys basketball team, which has won 11 South Coast Conference championships, three MIAA South Sectionals and one MIAA state title since 2000.
The success of the basketball team is, unfortunately, the exception and not the rule for the Vikings.
Since claiming the state championship in March 2010, the school has seen its enrollment decrease by a quarter and its once lofty athletic ambitions collide with reality.
Since the fall season began almost a month ago, the Wareham High School football, boys and girls soccer, field hockey, volleyball and golf teams have combined to win a total of one varsity game going into the past weekend.
Ed Rodrigues began this month as the fourth athletic director in the last four years. He comes to Wareham after a Hall of Fame basketball coaching career in New Bedford High School that included two state championships. He has been the sports director of the middle schools in New Bedford for the past five years.
"Being the fourth athletic director in four years hasn't helped things, but I plan on staying around," Rodrigues said. "The people I've dealt with are very nice and we're all on the same page to make this a better situation.
"The coaches work hard and the players are trying their best. The administration has been really good. Hopefully, we can turn it around in a couple of years."
Less than a month since school started, Rodrigues is sifting through the daily minutia of the fall sports season while searching for the right plan to return the Wareham High teams to prominence. He has some ideas from his past associations at New Bedford High and UMass Dartmouth.
"My goal is to hire coaches that believe their sport is the most important thing to them outside of family," he said. "They'll have passion for their sport and get people involved in a yearly basis, not just seasonal. I want to promote the attitude to be part of something good. Kids don't want to play on losing teams.
"We have a lot of coaches who have passion for their sport and, hopefully, that will be passed on to the students. I still believe you have to build from within. I want to invite middle school students to our games, hold clinics in the elementary and middle schools and promote Wareham High sports. I want those kids to want to be a Wareham Viking."
This is the second year that Wareham has received a waiver to allow eighth graders to play on high school teams. In some cases, that has provided depth. In others, it has enabled teams to survive.
Wareham High principal Scott Palladino has seen his school's enrollment dwindle from a high near 1,000 in the mid-2000s to the low 600s, dropping from 817 as late as 2009-2010 to 626 last year.
"We're in a tough conference and we're one of the smallest schools," Palladino said. "We've lost students to Upper Cape Regional and it's tough to replace that population."
Neighboring schools, such as Old Rochester Regional in Mattapoisett, have added school choice, which allows students living outside its district to apply to attend its schools.
Wareham also offers school choice and last year the net loss to choice students was 10, however, those numbers are not true for the high school.
"School choice has affected the high school more than the elementary schools," Janice Rotella, director of curriculum for the town's schools, said. "We're pretty much neutral, looking at school choice overall, but not by any particular school. Most of the kids coming into Wareham are at lower grade levels and more are going out at the secondary level."
The options of school choice, private, parochial or vocational education all factor into the decrease in enrollment, but there's more to it than that.
"I think it's an array of factors," Rotella said. "To say there's only one would be a misnomer. You can't pin it on one thing.
"We had received notice that Upper Cape had accepted in excess of 80 freshmen from Wareham. The increased number of students going to Upper Cape is a huge factor as is the shift in population here in Wareham. We were hit very hard by the economic downturn. We know people lost homes and were forced to move and that has affected the high school. Put those factors together and that accounts for most of it."
According to numbers provided by Upper Cape Regional in Bourne, the number of Wareham students attending has risen from 191 in 2008-2009 to 234 the last school year. The percentage of students from Wareham in the school has increased from 31 percent to 36 percent.
Each school's enrollment is based on students enrolled on Oct. 1 each year. The 2013-2014 numbers won't be finalized until Tuesday. The freshmen class at Wareham High has been around 200 each year, but if 80 students who are accepted actually attend the vocational school, it would have a major impact on the high school.
"In my eight years, I think there has been a perception that because of budget constraints, Wareham High School is not able to offer students the breadth of education that other schools have been able to," Rotella said. "We needed more technology and updated materials and the parents' perception was the budget was impeding that from happening. Maybe there was a better education elsewhere.
"Our students do well in 4-year colleges and overwhelming numbers of students go to some college, but perception got in the way. Our new superintendent of schools is committed to changing that perception. The focus is on public relations.
"The good news has to be shouted from the rooftops. Wareham High School is a Level 1 school with excellent test scores that are going up. That fact is not part of this maligned perception."
Rotella explained that town meeting voters in June passed a warrant article in excess of $300,000 to complete infrastructure for total WiFi at all the schools with increase bandwidth and online access and purchase text and online access e-books for reading and literacy in grades K-5, new math text and e-books for algebra through pre-calculus in the high school and math from grades K-8.
"We are moving to increase 1-on-1 computing with individual tablets," Rotella said. "We are increasing technology as an integral part of education and instruction, moving toward all those skills. When students graduate, they'll be going to college and careers where it's not on paper, but is all digital."
A former coach, Palladino knows that the athletic landscape has changed over the years, statewide and locally.
"Success breeds success," he acknowledged. "In my 20 years here, I've seen the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. As you build a program, those down years are few and far between. When they happen, you have to look at the feeder program. We've been spoiled. We've had a large feeder population going through the feeder program. I would suspect the feeder programs are down.
"Look at the teams that win," he pointed out. "It used to be the tough kids from the cities. Now, it's the affluent communities like Duxbury and Barnstable." Students from those communities can hone their skills in off-season programs that have a cost to them.
In addition to the number of students, there is a financial piece to this puzzle.
"We're cutting 3 percent and Upper Cape is adding 7 percent," Palladino pointed out. "That's a 10 percent difference and that's huge. We're a comprehensive high school and we'll get some of those students back. They're seeing change that being in academic classes half time is not cutting it."
Football coach Dan Nault acknowledged that some sports are cyclical.
"There are talent cycles we go through, especially at this school," Nault explained. "Last year, we had 18 seniors and 16 played a lot. This year, this is a young team that has only one player with true varsity experience. We have less kids, but the same percentage. Our enrollment has dropped, but when we had 1,000, about 100 were out for football. Now that we're at 600-plus, we have 55 out for football.
"We've been very good for a long time, but we've had 1-10 and 3-8 seasons. When we were 1-10 in 2010, we had 16 sophomores playing. Then we went 7-4 and 9-2, but we graduated those 16. We have a good product and can sell it. Now eighth graders can play. I took four eighth graders, who were too big to play Pop Warner. Kids want to play football here. Other options are not as enticing. Parents have ideas, but kids choose where they want to go."
There are external causes for a team's record, too.
"Why don't you win when you're very good?" Nault asked. "Well, Dighton-Rehoboth and Apponequet can have the same cycles and they're good, too. My goal this year is that we'll beat somebody we shouldn't and we'll find roles for everyone."
Girls soccer coach Cindy Sylvia is in her 17th year and 48th athletic season at Wareham High.
"I've seen the ups and downs," she said. "We've had championship teams and last year, my first 0-16 team. There are a lot of things in play socially and economically in town. Every program here is struggling. We had middle school sports, but that ended four years ago.
"We're struggling because top athletes from the eighth grade don't come here. We're not getting every eighth grader like we used to. We need to get the eighth-graders because, as soon as you step foot in this building, you'll want to stay.
"A lot has to do with the economics of the town. To get into an off-season program, it can cost $500-$1,000. Some families have trouble making the $100 user fee. For them to anticipate spending $1,000-$1,200 to play club soccer is tough. I have to give kids Saturday and Sunday off so they can work."
Rachael Hellyar took her volleyball team, which has the school's lone victory this fall, to the MIAA South Sectional Tournament two years ago, the first time a Wareham volleyball team qualified. She has started an intramural volleyball program for middle school girls on her own time in an effort to build the program. The results have been somewhat disappointing.
"We've lost a ton of kids, but we have to make it work," she said. "We're going to build winning teams. It takes time to build a tradition. I ran an intramural program for eight weeks, three times a week, for sixth through eighth graders, for free. I had 25 kids in this program and now all of the freshmen are playing for Upper Cape.
"I've seen our middle school intramural program numbers go up, but my experience is, I call the kids in the summer and they say, 'I'm sorry coach, I'm going to Upper Cape.' People want to be part of winning teams and it's hard to lose all your games. That holds some kids back."
John Sousa coaches the boys' soccer team and he has opened club options for those who choose to go that way and can afford it. He's also developed a relationship with the town's youth soccer program.
"Soccer has never been huge at Wareham High," Sousa said. "I'm trying to build it from the ground up. The youth soccer numbers are expanding and now, we have to get them into the high school.
"I run free clinics every Saturday in the winter from 9-to-1. I gave up all my Saturdays in trying to build that relationship with Wareham Youth Soccer."
Amanda Bobola is in her first season as the field hockey coach and she has had to dip into the eighth graders heavily this year to support the program.
"I'm disappointed we don't have the numbers of kids," Bobola said. "It's too bad there aren't more kids. There's a smaller pool to pick from and we have eight eighth graders. They haven't been given the opportunity to leave Wareham yet. They're new and developing in an awesome way, but it's hard to build when you don't know if they are coming back next year."
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September 29, 2013 12:00 AM
"; aryZooms[imgCounter] = "javascript: NewWindow(870,625,window.document.location+'&Template=photos&img="+imgCounter+"')";WAREHAM ? There's more to Wareham High School athletics than the triumphant boys basketball team, which has won 11 South Coast Conference championships, three MIAA South Sectionals and one MIAA state title since 2000.
The success of the basketball team is, unfortunately, the exception and not the rule for the Vikings.
Since claiming the state championship in March 2010, the school has seen its enrollment decrease by a quarter and its once lofty athletic ambitions collide with reality.
Since the fall season began almost a month ago, the Wareham High School football, boys and girls soccer, field hockey, volleyball and golf teams have combined to win a total of one varsity game going into the past weekend.
Ed Rodrigues began this month as the fourth athletic director in the last four years. He comes to Wareham after a Hall of Fame basketball coaching career in New Bedford High School that included two state championships. He has been the sports director of the middle schools in New Bedford for the past five years.
"Being the fourth athletic director in four years hasn't helped things, but I plan on staying around," Rodrigues said. "The people I've dealt with are very nice and we're all on the same page to make this a better situation.
"The coaches work hard and the players are trying their best. The administration has been really good. Hopefully, we can turn it around in a couple of years."
Less than a month since school started, Rodrigues is sifting through the daily minutia of the fall sports season while searching for the right plan to return the Wareham High teams to prominence. He has some ideas from his past associations at New Bedford High and UMass Dartmouth.
"My goal is to hire coaches that believe their sport is the most important thing to them outside of family," he said. "They'll have passion for their sport and get people involved in a yearly basis, not just seasonal. I want to promote the attitude to be part of something good. Kids don't want to play on losing teams.
"We have a lot of coaches who have passion for their sport and, hopefully, that will be passed on to the students. I still believe you have to build from within. I want to invite middle school students to our games, hold clinics in the elementary and middle schools and promote Wareham High sports. I want those kids to want to be a Wareham Viking."
This is the second year that Wareham has received a waiver to allow eighth graders to play on high school teams. In some cases, that has provided depth. In others, it has enabled teams to survive.
Wareham High principal Scott Palladino has seen his school's enrollment dwindle from a high near 1,000 in the mid-2000s to the low 600s, dropping from 817 as late as 2009-2010 to 626 last year.
"We're in a tough conference and we're one of the smallest schools," Palladino said. "We've lost students to Upper Cape Regional and it's tough to replace that population."
Neighboring schools, such as Old Rochester Regional in Mattapoisett, have added school choice, which allows students living outside its district to apply to attend its schools.
Wareham also offers school choice and last year the net loss to choice students was 10, however, those numbers are not true for the high school.
"School choice has affected the high school more than the elementary schools," Janice Rotella, director of curriculum for the town's schools, said. "We're pretty much neutral, looking at school choice overall, but not by any particular school. Most of the kids coming into Wareham are at lower grade levels and more are going out at the secondary level."
The options of school choice, private, parochial or vocational education all factor into the decrease in enrollment, but there's more to it than that.
"I think it's an array of factors," Rotella said. "To say there's only one would be a misnomer. You can't pin it on one thing.
"We had received notice that Upper Cape had accepted in excess of 80 freshmen from Wareham. The increased number of students going to Upper Cape is a huge factor as is the shift in population here in Wareham. We were hit very hard by the economic downturn. We know people lost homes and were forced to move and that has affected the high school. Put those factors together and that accounts for most of it."
According to numbers provided by Upper Cape Regional in Bourne, the number of Wareham students attending has risen from 191 in 2008-2009 to 234 the last school year. The percentage of students from Wareham in the school has increased from 31 percent to 36 percent.
Each school's enrollment is based on students enrolled on Oct. 1 each year. The 2013-2014 numbers won't be finalized until Tuesday. The freshmen class at Wareham High has been around 200 each year, but if 80 students who are accepted actually attend the vocational school, it would have a major impact on the high school.
"In my eight years, I think there has been a perception that because of budget constraints, Wareham High School is not able to offer students the breadth of education that other schools have been able to," Rotella said. "We needed more technology and updated materials and the parents' perception was the budget was impeding that from happening. Maybe there was a better education elsewhere.
"Our students do well in 4-year colleges and overwhelming numbers of students go to some college, but perception got in the way. Our new superintendent of schools is committed to changing that perception. The focus is on public relations.
"The good news has to be shouted from the rooftops. Wareham High School is a Level 1 school with excellent test scores that are going up. That fact is not part of this maligned perception."
Rotella explained that town meeting voters in June passed a warrant article in excess of $300,000 to complete infrastructure for total WiFi at all the schools with increase bandwidth and online access and purchase text and online access e-books for reading and literacy in grades K-5, new math text and e-books for algebra through pre-calculus in the high school and math from grades K-8.
"We are moving to increase 1-on-1 computing with individual tablets," Rotella said. "We are increasing technology as an integral part of education and instruction, moving toward all those skills. When students graduate, they'll be going to college and careers where it's not on paper, but is all digital."
A former coach, Palladino knows that the athletic landscape has changed over the years, statewide and locally.
"Success breeds success," he acknowledged. "In my 20 years here, I've seen the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. As you build a program, those down years are few and far between. When they happen, you have to look at the feeder program. We've been spoiled. We've had a large feeder population going through the feeder program. I would suspect the feeder programs are down.
"Look at the teams that win," he pointed out. "It used to be the tough kids from the cities. Now, it's the affluent communities like Duxbury and Barnstable." Students from those communities can hone their skills in off-season programs that have a cost to them.
In addition to the number of students, there is a financial piece to this puzzle.
"We're cutting 3 percent and Upper Cape is adding 7 percent," Palladino pointed out. "That's a 10 percent difference and that's huge. We're a comprehensive high school and we'll get some of those students back. They're seeing change that being in academic classes half time is not cutting it."
Football coach Dan Nault acknowledged that some sports are cyclical.
"There are talent cycles we go through, especially at this school," Nault explained. "Last year, we had 18 seniors and 16 played a lot. This year, this is a young team that has only one player with true varsity experience. We have less kids, but the same percentage. Our enrollment has dropped, but when we had 1,000, about 100 were out for football. Now that we're at 600-plus, we have 55 out for football.
"We've been very good for a long time, but we've had 1-10 and 3-8 seasons. When we were 1-10 in 2010, we had 16 sophomores playing. Then we went 7-4 and 9-2, but we graduated those 16. We have a good product and can sell it. Now eighth graders can play. I took four eighth graders, who were too big to play Pop Warner. Kids want to play football here. Other options are not as enticing. Parents have ideas, but kids choose where they want to go."
There are external causes for a team's record, too.
"Why don't you win when you're very good?" Nault asked. "Well, Dighton-Rehoboth and Apponequet can have the same cycles and they're good, too. My goal this year is that we'll beat somebody we shouldn't and we'll find roles for everyone."
Girls soccer coach Cindy Sylvia is in her 17th year and 48th athletic season at Wareham High.
"I've seen the ups and downs," she said. "We've had championship teams and last year, my first 0-16 team. There are a lot of things in play socially and economically in town. Every program here is struggling. We had middle school sports, but that ended four years ago.
"We're struggling because top athletes from the eighth grade don't come here. We're not getting every eighth grader like we used to. We need to get the eighth-graders because, as soon as you step foot in this building, you'll want to stay.
"A lot has to do with the economics of the town. To get into an off-season program, it can cost $500-$1,000. Some families have trouble making the $100 user fee. For them to anticipate spending $1,000-$1,200 to play club soccer is tough. I have to give kids Saturday and Sunday off so they can work."
Rachael Hellyar took her volleyball team, which has the school's lone victory this fall, to the MIAA South Sectional Tournament two years ago, the first time a Wareham volleyball team qualified. She has started an intramural volleyball program for middle school girls on her own time in an effort to build the program. The results have been somewhat disappointing.
"We've lost a ton of kids, but we have to make it work," she said. "We're going to build winning teams. It takes time to build a tradition. I ran an intramural program for eight weeks, three times a week, for sixth through eighth graders, for free. I had 25 kids in this program and now all of the freshmen are playing for Upper Cape.
"I've seen our middle school intramural program numbers go up, but my experience is, I call the kids in the summer and they say, 'I'm sorry coach, I'm going to Upper Cape.' People want to be part of winning teams and it's hard to lose all your games. That holds some kids back."
John Sousa coaches the boys' soccer team and he has opened club options for those who choose to go that way and can afford it. He's also developed a relationship with the town's youth soccer program.
"Soccer has never been huge at Wareham High," Sousa said. "I'm trying to build it from the ground up. The youth soccer numbers are expanding and now, we have to get them into the high school.
"I run free clinics every Saturday in the winter from 9-to-1. I gave up all my Saturdays in trying to build that relationship with Wareham Youth Soccer."
Amanda Bobola is in her first season as the field hockey coach and she has had to dip into the eighth graders heavily this year to support the program.
"I'm disappointed we don't have the numbers of kids," Bobola said. "It's too bad there aren't more kids. There's a smaller pool to pick from and we have eight eighth graders. They haven't been given the opportunity to leave Wareham yet. They're new and developing in an awesome way, but it's hard to build when you don't know if they are coming back next year."
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