IT WAS RECENTLY announced that Montpelier High School doesn't have enough players interested in playing hockey so they are not going to have a hockey team this year.

The kids who do want to play are going to play on the Northfield Hockey team along with kids from Randolph whose high school also has no hockey team.

Northfield is fortunate in that it is able to use the wonderful facilities at Norwich University to play their games.

But Montpelier has an even greater problem that has arisen which focuses on sports in general. The question that has been raised is whether the school is going to field competitive sports teams at all.

This apparently all came about when a group of parents complained that their kids were cut from a varsity team and shoved back down to junior varsity because other players were better.

Now, the school district has started debating whether sports teams should be composed of the very best players or whether it is better to let everyone play who wants to regardless of skill.

"The role of high school interscholastic athletics is one that is really open for schools to define and to decide," Peter Evans, Montpelier's principal and interim superintendent, recently told the Times Argus.

"We're going to test the waters to open the mission to equal playing time" for everyone he said.

The upshot of this is obvious. The school could very well end up doing away with competitive athletics all together, playing intramural games only.

To be competitive, any school has to have the very best that it can field on their team if they expect to beat other schools who are fielding their very best.

This whole discussion comes down to an idea that has been floating around the country in recent years, that no child should be allowed to feel bad by losing.

Already, in some California elementary schools, baseball is played without keeping score so no one will feel that they lost. Everyone is allowed to participate regardless of skill level.

As a youngster, I wasn't very good at team sports. remember being called "the statue" when I came to bat in baseball because I just stood there and wouldn't hit the ball as it crossed the plate. The fact was that I didn't have much talent for team sports. I never got any trophies for playing on any team. Some have talent and other do not. I was just one of those who did not.

Regardless, today, the saw seems to be that everyone ought to get a trophy regardless of where they place in any competition. The trophy is for participation rather than winning anything. If you were in the game, you won just by being there.

There are a lot of kids that have their trophy cases lined with cups for being there regardless of whether they have any talent of not.

I just don't believe that you instill self esteem in a child by letting everyone get a trophy for just being there.

This entire idea leaves our young people feeling that they are not required to compete to win. It is a recipe for defeat in real life.

Are we going to keep our kids from understanding that they are going to have to compete against others when they go out in the real world to get a job?

When they get turned down out there in the real world, how are they going to cope?

The fact is that they are not going to be able to cope very well.

You can send your son or daughter to law school but only fifty per cent of them will pass the bar exam on the first try. They'll never practice law at all unless they learn to compete because they have to be the best in order to survive in the legal profession.

It is no different in any other profession. Not everyone can go to medical school. Only the very top achievers with the very best grades in science will make it into medical school.

Veterinary school is even tougher. Admissions are severely limited in order to keep the profession from being overrun by too many veterinarians.

I know of what I speak because when I was in grade school and high school I had good grades but no sports trophies and when it came to picking a college, another boy in town who had grades as good as I did was selected over me because he was accomplished at high school sports. He got the college position I wanted and I ended up at what I considered a less prestigious school. Admissions wouldn't take more than one student from the same town. That's life. Because I knew that some won and others lost out, I was prepared to move on and immediately get over the disappointment.

Letting everyone play and letting everyone win by merely participating does nothing to prepare our boys and girls for the rigors of life after school.

Rather, it soothes kids into thinking that they'll get what they want regardless of how hard they have had to work to get it.

Of course, in this new age, if you don't make it, the government is there to take care of you. Right?

Not exactly! Those who are the achievers will make it even in government. They are the ones who will be passing the laws and setting government policy.

There are always going to be generals and privates and not all privates are ever going to become generals regardless of how hard they try. The fact is some have more talent than others.

Apparently, the concerned parents in Montpelier complained that if their kids didn't make the varsity team, they were left playing on the junior varsity and were treated as second-class citizens, told to double up on bus seats while varsity players had their own seats and were instructed to wait to get food at a team dinner until the varsity players had gotten theirs.

Of course! Why shouldn't those who are the best be rewarded? That's the way it is in real life.

The ones who are the best achievers and have the most talent make the most money and live better than others do. That's the way life is.

The complaint also seems to go to the fact that kids today are early on deciding what sport they play best and concentrating on that sport from a young age.

Again, if at a young age the coaches decide that a particular kid has talent for a particular sport, then by all means, that kid should advance and if he or she is very good, get the trophies too.

The appearance of young achievers has been brought about by the explosion of club sports for young kids like Dynamo Soccer here in Northfield or Capital Soccer in Montpelier.

These programs allow the children with talent in those sports to come into high school better prepared than others and in many instances ready to go immediately into varsity sports pushing others who are already in school off the team.

"We are finding that more and more kids are specializing in a sport rather than the old traditional model (where) as the season approaches you leave (one sport) and go on to the next sport," Mr. Evans told the Times Argus.

Doctors specialize, so do lawyers. Even veterinarians are beginning to specialize now that the medicine available to people is being used on animals in greater numbers.

Some of us will become professionals while other will become mechanics and electricians.

Electricians specialize as well. Some specialize in residential wiring while others specialize in wiring commercial buildings.

Regardless of what profession or occupation one chooses, the goal should be to be the very best at what you do.

However, this trend toward specialization at the secondary school level bothers some. Because one child may have more talent than another bothers some too.

California has been a bell weather in this trend toward so called "making school sports a character building experience" rather than what they call "a win-at-all-costs mentality."

What's wrong with winning?

In fact, what's wrong with loosing? It's all part of growing up and learning that in life we all have to compete to survive. The fact is that the best survive better than those who are less than the best.

The children in our schools need to learn that and if they don't strive to be the best, our society is in for a great awakening when we see those who do push to the top coming from India and China and not from the good old U.S.A.

Tim Brown, athletic director at Mount Anthony Union High School in Bennington, told the Times Argus "at the varsity level, the coaches understand there is a pressure to be successful." As long as the younger students are mentally prepared for the pressure of playing varsity, coaches "have a responsibility to try and put the best people on the field."

Steve Mears, a behavior specialist at Montpelier's Main Street Middle School, who has coached school sports since 1974, told the Times Argus, the varsity teams are "trying to work toward the goal — the goal is a state championship."

He went on to tell the Times Argus "If I [were] a varsity coach, that's the goal, to have the best players. That's a tough one for some of these kids."

In an e-mail to Mr. Evans the complaining soccer parents group said that while "Capital Soccer serves an important role as a private soccer club in which athletes who so choose may participate to develop their skills and enhance their ability … (it) is not for everyone - it is expensive, it conflicts with other sports programs … and it involves a commitment which not every student or every family can make."

That means the kids whose families can't afford the club programs or are unable to make the commitment, might get shut out of high school sports, they opined.

Because a child can't afford to be in Dynamos does that mean that all competitive high school sports should be shoved over the dam? It's like throwing the baby out with the bath water.

It's like saying that all kids are entitled to go to Phillips Exeter regardless of whether their parents can afford it or not. A lot of us did pretty well without going to a private school. Of course, many of those that did, achieved more in life. It doesn't mean that we all have a right to go and if we can't, we should do away with private schools.

Mount Anthony Union High School launched what it calls the Tri-Honor Athlete program, where students who play a sport in all three seasons and make the honor roll receive a pin to attach to their varsity letter and have their name added to a plaque in the school cafeteria.

Mr. Brown told the Times Argus that the number of students participating has jumped from 12 initially to 52 last year.

A similar program is in place at Rutland High School.

I really like what Mr. Brown said in the close of his interview with the Times Argus reporter: "You can't walk into the band room the first day in school and expect to be first trumpet just because you're a senior but have never played the trumpet."

Competition is the name of the game of life and it will always be so. So long as there are sports to play, we should field the very best and most talented players we have and try as hard as possible to excel.