School athletic policies earn praise
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The Dunkirk City School District's athletics director lauded their crackdown on class skipping and bad grades at last week's Board of Education meeting.
Andrew Burnside also reported on the first two varsity football games of the season, both played at Karl Hoeppner Field. Though the Marauders had mixed results on the field, losing a heartbreaker to Lake Shore but then besting Albion, Burnside said that things went smoothly off the field.
He said the new athletics policy "has gone incredibly well. I don't think the writeups are down but I think they are just taking a different toll. I talk to our attendance person in the morning and she notices that very few athletes are coming in late -- and all it is is a simple call or communication to our coaches, and boom, this person is not playing or practicing that day."
Burnside noted a case where one football player is getting kept off the field because he refused to put away his cell phone.
In another case, several athletes on one team skipped a class and wound up getting suspended from the next game. Due to the suspensions and other injuries, the game had to be postponed, and Dunkirk might wind up having to forfeit the contest.
Burnside continued, "Beyond that, we're actually growing in numbers, more kids come up to me each and every day asking if they can get more involved.
We've opened registration back up… we've been able to process more kids who wanted to become more involved, which is an outstanding feeling."
He said "the first two home football games were the cause of many nights of lack of sleep with me. With some small exceptions, we think they went off with great regard. We did have some incidents that were beyond our control, that happened outside the fences of our district."
Burnside wants the board to hire one additional police officer for the last two home games, to watch the area at the entrance to the field. The final game hosts rival Fredonia, and Burnside said Fredonia Athletic Director Greg Lauer has agreed to send over his game supervisors to help control the Hillbilly supporters.
Board member Claudia Szczerbacki asked if Dunkirk and Fredonia supporters could be brought in through separate entrances.
"That's the ultimate goal. We can tell people that, we can't control if they listen or not," Burnside replied. "At the same point, with our concessions and bathrooms on the home side, it's tough to really separate the crowds. "To be honest, I think the crowds in the game are typically fairly contained. It's the stuff happening on the outside -- especially for Dunkirk-Fredonia. It's the people that maybe don't want to be under the lights and constant supervision."