RallyNorth.net

Feed the feeder system

Tuesday, December, 11 By Dave Dyer
Staff writer

Frankly, it could be a long winter for the Haverhill girls and boys basketball teams. The talent pool is limited and the numbers are way down. When you only have 45 boys out on all levels and 35 girls, there is a serious problem.

The boys haven't made the tourney the last two years and last year was the third straight and sixth in the last eight years the girls didn't qualify.

The problem is no secret. In the last 10 years, the feeder system has nearly evaporated. The middle school programs are not as strong as they once were, the Haverhill travel teams, which were so important in the teams' success in the 1990s, were eliminated and the involvement of the coaches in summer activities has declined.

There has been little coordination in developing a comprehensive program from the bottom up. The lack of large summer camps like you find at Central Catholic and Andover, where kids get indoctrinated into the system and begin their dreams of playing for those schools, has always hurt, but the decline of the middle school and travel team programs has been even more harmful.

Those involved with the athletic department and the programs involved have known about this problem for years, but very little has been done. As the field hockey program knows all too well, you can't expect to turn freshmen who have never played a sport into accomplished players overnight and, if you can't, producing a winner is near impossible.

There are some signs that the Haverhill Recreation Department and the NetGain group are taking steps to invigorate a youth program and get it headed back in the right direction. But their efforts might not be enough unless the coaches and Trovato seems to realize this and administrators at the high school get involved.

Haverhill's once-proud girls program could struggle mightily this year. That would be unfortunate, but it'd be even more unfortunate if that's the case for years and years to come.