If budget and schedule problems can be solved, future sixth-graders may be able to play team sports in middle school. Superintendent Linda Dwight told the School Committee that parents have expressed interest in allowing sixth-graders to take part in some after-school sports programs, but less extensively than older students.
Some parents on the Athletic Advisory Committee say sixth-graders, who have just “crossed the street” from the elementary school, don’t feel fully included at Bromfield, partly because fewer activities are open to them, Dwight reported. Sports would give those kids some afternoon activities while they are adjusting to middle school, she said.
Any new program would start small, Dwight said, possibly with a developmental basketball team primarily for sixth-graders, but also open to seventh- and eighth-graders who want to improve their skills. Other possibilities might be track in the spring and cross-country or field hockey in the fall. Dwight emphasized that teams for younger students would have fewer and shorter practices than those for older students.
Dwight said Bromfield Principal Scott Hoffman and David Boisvert, the athletic director, both support the idea. The limiting factor, she said, is the availability of courts or fields and the need for more coaching staff.
