When an Athlete of the Year Just Isn't

I believe in certain things.

People always deserve second chances. You can’t always judge a person from what you see on television or on a playing surface any more than you can judge them from a newspaper article. We see only pieces of any athlete’s life and think we know them.

That’s not always the case. Athletes have problems in the same way everyday workers have problems. We hold them to a higher standard because of their status. Perhaps that is unfair, especially at the professional level.

But I don’t think we should turn a blind eye and only look at the good they do on the field. At levels below professional, I think there are certain standards we should expect student-athletes to adhere to. In college, that may be maintaining decent academic standing and staying out of trouble with the law.

In high school, that standard needs to be even higher. And that’s why a story in today’s Metrowest Daily News, a Boston paper, bothers me.

Each year, the paper selects a male and female high school athlete of the year. This year, the honor for Female Athlete of the Year went to Lekia Cowen.

Cowen’s athletic accomplishments are impressive. She scored well over 1,000 career points in high school basketball, nailed the penalty kick to clinch a state soccer title, spent time with the school’s tennis and softball teams, and always excelled at all sports on the field.

Even more impressive, in the fall, she will head to Bryant University to play on the school’s basketball team.

If that were the story, I wouldn’t be writing this piece.

Just prior to the softball state tournament, Cowen was dismissed from the team for a violation of the MIAA (Massachusetts Inter-scholastic Athletic Association) chemical health policy. On May 27, 2008, she was pulled over for driving with a suspended license, being a minor in possession of liquor, and an equipment violation.

Let’s leave the equipment violation alone. We’ve all had a cop on our tail for a blown tail light. The other two are harder. While there is no doubt that high school kids drink more now than ever before, it still isn’t legal and needs to be viewed as a major violation of school and most parental policies. Even if Cowen isn't the one doing the drinking (no DUI), having it in the car, transporting it, or allowing others to have it in a car she's driving shows a lack of responsibility. It's apparent she did not understand the potential consequences.

Even if we could overlook that, she was driving with a suspended license, which means that she’d been in trouble with the law before this.

I don’t think we should take away her scholarship. I don’t think we should begrudge her athletic accomplishments in any way. In fact, this hopefully is a solid learning experience for her. That said, she should not be honored given these violations.

Cowen was removed from a team as a result of her conduct, yet a newspaper honors those same accomplishments and buries the story of the arrest in the article. There is no doubt that Cowen is a fine athlete, but there are other standards we need to expect high school students to live up to.

At this age, we are taught that being an athlete, especially at a varsity level, is more than just what you do on the court. Being an athlete involves your conduct in the classroom, where students are required to maintain a minimum GPA to compete (at least in Massachusetts), and in your everyday life.

Student-athletes should be expected to stay out of trouble and need to be held accountable, in every sense, when this is not the case. That means that they should not be allowed to participate during that season or receive any post-season awards when major issues arise.

As a means of communication to the community, a newspaper should hold an even higher standard when determining awards of this nature and magnitude. The Metrowest Daily News is distributed to a large area, and I’m certain there were other deserving females that had not had this type of brush with the law.

Younger athletes look up to high school stars in much the same way they do athletes at the college and professional level. Growing up in a town, I was always aware of the scores and the athletes. And I knew, from a young age, I wanted to wear the same jersey they did. When I got there, I understood it meant I was going to be looked at in the same way and was proud of that fact.

Female athletics is garnering more and more attention, and the need for positive female role models is imperative in the development of more athletes. "Positive" is the key word. Young women will read about Cowen. And they will think that it’s ok to get in a little trouble as long as what you do on the field makes up for it.

This shouldn’t be the message we send to any young athlete.

In the NFL, they explicitly state that those in violation of the substance abuse policy cannot receive post-season awards that year. This should be the least we expect in our schools.

Lekia Cowen is a fine athlete and, hopefully, has learned her lessons. But she is no athlete of the year. The Metrowest Daily News should know better than to call her such.