Mustangs' class shows in team academic performance

Often, we attach a huge amount of importance to high school sports.

It’s fantastic that they’re fun and they mean a heck of a lot to the students playing them.

However, when a winning record isn’t attached to a team’s accomplishment, many of us tend to forget about all the nonathletic benefits.

We have to remember students attend high school to prepare themselves for what comes after, whether that means going to college, finding a job or something else. Earning athletic scholarships are but one tiny piece of a much larger puzzle.

In that respect, the state championship for academics in athletics is perhaps the biggest honor a school can earn for its sports programs. To earn it once is a huge accomplishment for coaches, players and athletic directors alike.

To earn it seven years in a row? That’s absurd, but that’s exactly what Lakewood Ranch High has done in Class 8A. This year, the school had six sports finish atop individual GPA rankings (Boys cross country, 3.635 GPA; football, 3.341; wrestling, 3.424; softball, 3.674; boys track, 3.590; girls track, 3.724), and eight other sports finish with top-five GPAs. Every Lakewood Ranch sport finished in the top 15.

Teams must have at least a 3.0 GPA to be eligible for inclusion in the rankings. During the seven-year streak, Lakewood Ranch has never had a sport ineligible for inclusion in the race to be the overall Florida High School Athletic Association Class 8A Academic Team Champion.

Lakewood Ranch Athletic Director Shawn Trent is as ecstatic as anyone about the streak, but is also a bit bewildered.

“It’s almost scary now,” Trent said. “Some year it has to catch up to us.”

Trent credits his coaches with putting an emphasis on the importance of studying. Trent played fullback at Kent State University, and said he struggled academically at the beginning of his college career. No one had ever pushed him to study.

He took note of how college coaches implement study halls and make sure athletes get their work done. In his hiring of coaches at Lakewood Ranch, he’s made sure to target coaches with college experience. He knows they will have that same knowledge.

In a perfect world, Trent would like Lakewood Ranch to win both the all-sports trophy and the academic team title every year, but if he had to pick one, the academic title is it. In evaluating the job done by coaches, the same logic applies. On-field success is important, but the primary goal at Lakewood Ranch is to prepare kids for life’s next steps.

“Obviously, everybody wants to win,” Trent said. “Everybody wants to be successful. At the same time, the bottom line is, our job is supposed to be to get kids through high school with the best chance they have to pursue their academics into college, and hopefully make them the best students they can possibly be.

“It’s great that kids are going to college to play sports, but if they can’t make it through college academically once there, then what difference does it make?”

Even with the focus on academics, Lakewood Ranch had as much, if not more, athletic success than its competitors in 2016-2017, with two team sports, boys soccer and boys basketball, reaching their respective Final Fours, softball coming within an inning of reaching its state tournament, boys and girls track and field taking a combined four gold medals, and wrestling having a second-place finisher in Hunter Reed.

Come fall, there’s no reason to think the school will falter on either front.