A few years ago, I had some volunteer tomato plants come up in my front flower bed. My kids were playing basketball near them, and the ball went into the plants. I scolded my kids for messing with my tomato plants. Gay and Mike Krueger were visiting us, and Mike looked at me and said, “You aren’t raising tomato plants. You are raising children.” Those very profound words have been with me ever since.

The original intent of schools was strictly academic. That has changed. Sports now take a large percentage of the day during the school year -- albeit extracurricular. The sports system has surrounded us and gradually overtaken our families. We play more sports not only during each season, we play every sport all year round. It is this way from coast to coast in this country. I think this is an affront to our families. Not only do we give our kids up for football from August through October, and give our basketball kids up from October through March (and sometimes April), the system has been known to take them from us during holidays, summer break and weekends. Every sport is like this.

I am not raising a ball player. I am raising a kid who happens to be an athlete and likes sports. But that is only one very minor aspect of who a child is.

As a mother, I would love my kids to always win in their endeavors. But it is my opinion that sometimes the cost of winning is too high a price to pay. Most kids don’t make it to a college team, and less than 1 percent of kids make it to professional sports teams. So, what’s a parent to do? Incur the wrath of my child and the coaches by going against the system, or let the system take my child and do with him as it pleases?

We have picked up one of our kids at 2 a.m. from a game (when he could have been home at midnight by riding home with his father instead of riding the bus home); he did homework from 2 to 4, slept from 4 to 6:30, and then went to school. That can sabotage the academics of a kid -- and has for many.

For balance, there has to be respect on both sides of any equation. The parents need to respect that the coaches have a job to do, and the coaches need to respect the time and needs of the families involved. If winning is the primary goal of the coaches and parents, both should see the bigger picture of the life lessons our children learn in sports. Winning as the primary goal can be in direct opposition to the parents’ goals and values for their children.

I hope our school board and administration look at the whole man or woman, not just the win and loss record, of each and every coach in our district. Are they good teachers and role models? Winning alone does not make a good coach. And, I hope that our school board doesn’t judge a coach on his record of winning, but on his record of changing the lives of children for the better.

When I get my child to practice on time, I expect that my child will be released from practice on time. If a child is late to practice, usually the punishment is that child has to run. Many times I have waited as much as 30 minutes for a coach to conclude a practice that was supposed to end 30 minutes earlier than it did. That is disrespectful of my time and that of my family. What is the punishment for the coach when he or she makes me late getting dinner on the table and getting ny children home late to start homework?

If at all possible, we attend all our children’s events. We support them. But, we want them to be well rounded, nothing out of balance in any realm -- spiritual, physical, emotional and intellectual. Our children need to be balanced.

I realize that playing sports is extracurricular -- that it is a choice to play a sport. But when a few can make a decision that affects many, and the many have no input, how balanced is that? There is something wrong with that system.

Also, in our school rules, a coach can make a kid run (a punitive measure in my book) for missing a sports practice because of a dental or medical appointment, or because he or she was sick. School personnel call that “making up the time missed.” In my opinion, it is nothing other than punishment for not being in practice. Unlike academic work, that “time” cannot be “made up” because of the nature of the activity. What that does is create an incentive to go to sports practice and a disincentive to attend academic classes. Kids beg not to be taken out of ball practice to go to a doctor’s appointment, so parents (I include myself) cave in and take them out of an academic class instead. That goes completely against the original intent of our schools, and I believe this lack of recognition of what is truly important is a detriment to our children.

After having kids in sports for the past eight years, I have come to the conclusion that the system will take our children as much as we will allow. The system is out of balance.

As I understand it, when school starts this year, high school athletes will be required to attend morning workouts at 7 a.m. each school day throughout the school year, whether it is during the sport season or not. I am very much against this.

The requirement of our athletes having to come to school at 7 a.m. each morning during the school year is one that affects each family, not just each athlete. When that decision was made, were the needs of the families involved taken into account? What is the procedure for vetting a change like the one proposed? Is there a procedure at all? Will we be given that hour back in the evening by the kids being allowed to come home an hour earlier? If the kids return home late from a game, will they still be required to go to the 7 a.m. workout the next morning? Plus, adding one hour for each of 177 days in the school year means these kids will go to school an additional 22 eight-hour days. I consider that unacceptable.

This letter may make many angry with me -- not the least of which are my children. But I’m not running a popularity contest. Sometimes, being a parent means doing the hard stuff -- doing what is best for my child.

We all want our children to be good at everything. We want them to be musicians, athletes and academic wonders. We want them to have good social skills. Some of us want each of our children to have a strong spiritual connection to God. We all need to have a conversation about what is good for our children. We aren’t raising ball players. We are raising children.

My job is to keep balance in my child’s life. Our culture is top heavy with sports. Winning shouldn’t even be a secondary goal. There are too many other goals that are so much more important.

Christie Cofield