Virtue in High School Sports

Every synopsis of the documentary Hoop Dreams is about the same: the film follows two African American boys, from equally rough neighborhoods, as they pursue their dreams of becoming professional basketball players. However, while following these two young men, William Gates and Arthur Agee, real issues of race and social class begin to take a central role. Both boys are accepted to the prestigious St. Joseph's High School, which has a nationally renowned basketball program. Gates makes the varsity team as a starter, Agee makes the freshman team. Both of them try to rise to the academic challenges of their new school, and both of them are on scholarship. However, when their scholarships are in jeopardy at the end of the year, William is lucky enough to have caught the eye of a wealthy St. Joseph alum who offers to pay for his schooling. Arthur does not receive any offers, and despite his family's best efforts, has to transfer to public school - what appears to be a major blow to his dreams of being a basketball star.

The film continues to develop in this way as we watch both William and Arthur deal with very real issues while holding onto their dreams. In Heather L. Reid's essay "Sport, Education, and the Meaning of Victory,"she makes claim that the value of sports in education has not changed since Ancient Greece - sports are still about developing an individual's virtue, or aretê, as the Ancient Greeks would say. She defines aretê with 4 virtues: self-knowledge, courage, discipline, and justice, and states that the role of sports in education is to help students attain these characteristics. My middle school softball coach might take solace in the fact that although we didn't win a single game in 3 whole years, we were some of the most self-knowledgable, courageous, disciplined, and just 8th graders in the league - we just had no hand-eye coordination.

However, she believes that it's okay for winning to be the goal of high school sports, so long as the primary aim is aretê. Reid states, "Schools subscribing to this philosophy may still hire and fire coaches based on their ability to win, but should only do so to the extent that such wins are manifestations of the winning virtues the coach is actually instilling in his or her athletes." 

It's evident in Hoop Dreams that for St. Joseph's basketball program, winning and aretê are one in the same. When William first joins the varsity squad, his coach explicitly tells him that his goal isn't just to make him into a great basketball player, but a well-rounded and virtuous human being, and it's obvious by the way the St. Joseph's team sat in complete silence on their bus to an away game that they're exceedingly disciplined. But this aretê comes at face value, as seen in the injustices of Arthur's dropped scholarship, and in the way William's coach later exploits his talents. Arthur's parents are both heartbroken and outraged when they discover that their son will be unable to attend St. Joseph's for another year. The coaches didn't think Arthur was developing as a basketball player, so his scholarship was retracted. Though of course no one from St. Joseph's comes out and says this, Arthur's parents and us, the viewers, understand that this is the case - a pretty unjust thing for a program that's supposedly built around virtue to do. 

William runs into trouble when he suffers a knee injury and his grades begin to slip. Once the star player, William receives very little support during this time when he is of no use to the team. Both his knee and his status eventually recover, but his coach's lack of virtue becomes evident once again as he begins to put William on a pedestal for the rest of the team. We see that during one practice where the coach didn't think the players were working hard enough, he asks William, in front of the whole team, if he thinks they're giving their best efforts, and tells the team to do what William does. This blatant favoritism is hardly in alignment with justice, but since William is the top-scoring player, he receives special treatment. 

Reid's assertion that the true goal of school sports remains developing aretê is clearly not the case in Hoop Dreams as Arthur and William are merely disposable depending on their athletic success. Reid states that, "schools are in the business of making better people, and their use of athletics for profit rather than education would amount to egregious exploitation of the very people they profess to serve."  This quotations seems much more appropriate to the story of Hoop Dreams. While sports certainly serve a purpose, if all school sport programs function the way St. Joseph's did, that purpose is not aretê.