The Maverick Football program has grown by leaps and bounds in the past couple of years, and now, the next quantum leap forward, a featured story on an ESPN award winning show. Outside the Lines has been following Connor Garrett and the La Costa Canyon football team around for the past couple of months, culminating in a phenomenal article and television show that focus on the commonly overlooked tale of two programs, in two separate worlds, the La Costa Canyon Mavericks and the Oceanside Pirates.
You can read the article here.
I love to see the Mavericks getting some great press coverage. I wonder how ESPN got the idea for this storyline.
2,192 miles. That's the distance from Bristol, Connecticut, the headquarters of ESPN, to our school. A recent article in "Outside the Lines" written by Gare Joyce details the life of two varsity football players, Oceanside's Ricky Seale and our own Connor Garret. In short, the article implies that while our school is a spoiled, overfed, rich dreamland, Oceanside is a gritty gang shooting, live or die hell. Joyce makes the point that La Costa Canyon's accomplishments in sports are due to the generous funding of the parents, while Oceanside's students are thrown onto the field by their parents in a desperate attempt to get a scholarship in order to avoid working at McDonalds.
Joyce has spent too much time in Conneticut watching "Remember the Titans," imagining high school sports being a mix of race, money and anger, covered up by a slick, or in Oceanside's case, not so slick, uniform. Joyce starts out his article by tearing down the image of our small, yet spunky defensive back Connor Garret into what he calls a "Pop Warner Player." Not only is this remark hurtful, it is an unnecessary comparison to star-hulk running back Ricky Seale. Throughout the article the only sincere comment that the writer gives Garret is that, "he is the coolest person in school" and even that is drowned by the swirl of back hand insults pointing at the direction that Garret is a product of his environment community of rich kids.
The students of our campus have a different view on ourselves and Garret, an example of privilege who didn't end up at an expensive private school. The fact that the parents are have more economic means is really the only way our school differs from Oceanside. Both schools are by the beach, both having the surf crowd and great weather. The heaven and hell image given by Joyce is an insult not only to our school but even more, Oceanside.
Joyce must have gone to a very unique high school while growing up, because the picture of Oceanside as a gang ridden death trap certainly isn't reality. Our school is what many would call an 'upper class' school, but Oceanside represents a typical American high school and even that is an understatement. One simple reason, location. Oceanside lives up to its name living by the beautiful pacific ocean. Move it to the middle of Nevada and Joyce has a story. But clearly the school whose parents are 50 percent college grads is no third world nation lacking a stable education system.
ESPN insulted both schools in Joyce's article. He played up the differences in economics and race while missing what is most important- how football has improved both of their lives. He removed the work of countless Americans towards an equal chance for all and placing a 'second coming' recondition of race and income diversifying students just to make a story