1 Of Cincinnati’s Best H.S. Football Teams To Disappear If Emergency Levy Doesn’t Pass

Cincinnati.com, Paul Daugherty

http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20121030/COL03/310300100/Doc-d-shame-Colerain-football-goes-away?odyssey=mod|newswell|text|FRONTPAGE|s

The Homecoming parade starts at the government complex on Springdale Road. Vehicles of all shapes and sizes stroll their way through streets of small, tidy homes, row after row of what John Mellencamp called “little pink houses,’ before the procession settles in a great and happy mass at the high school.

People turn out for the parade. Lots of people, of all ages and races, all along the route. They wear red and white in all combinations. They paint their faces. The little kids have streamers on the ends of their bicycle handlebars. They hang logo flags from flagpoles. They affix posters to the insides of living room windows.

GO CARDINALS.

Ain’t that America?

We won’t say that Colerain High School football defines Colerain Township. There is too much else going on there. We will say it has a voice in the conversation. A loud and prideful voice. Colerain is like lots of little places, all over the country. Even if it is a big place, in the middle of an even bigger place.

Sports bind. Football binds the most. Especially when your team is perennially successful. There’s nothing unusual about the powerful beacon of the Friday night lights. What’s unusual at Colerain is, there’s a chance they’ll be turned off after this season ends, which could be as soon as Saturday night. The Cardinals host St. Xavier Saturday at 7, in the first round of the state playoffs.

“This is a shut-the-lights-off deal,’ says Dan Bolden, Colerain’s athletic director. “I am drop-dead serious. Store it, sell it, the party is over.’

There is a levy on the ballot next Tuesday. A 10-year “emergency levy’ that if passed, would allow all extracurricular activities in the Northwest school district to be funded, everything from football to jazz band to drama club. If it fails, everything will be axed. If the 4.95-mill levy ($150 more a year, from a $100,000 home) fails, sports will disappear.

That’s what those advocating passage are saying.

Often enough, we hear dire talk like this from proponents of a tax increase. It’s a little like the Bengals threatening to move to Baltimore. Colerain taxpayers have voted down levies before. The parade still strolled. Fundraisers were held, pay-for-play rates were increased. Life went on, same as it ever was.

Not this time, Dan Bolden says.

The boosters can’t cover the costs anymore, not for both Colerain and Northwest Highs. Colerain already charges its athletes $200 a sport. Bolden doesn’t believe parents should be asked to pay more. And so one of the Tristate’s most successful football programs faces a shutdown. “It’s gut wrenching,’ Bolden says.

He doesn’t want you to think he worries just about football.

“I think back to four or five state championships in cross country,’ he says. “Four years ago, we were in the Final Four in softball. Three years ago, basketball was in the Sweet 16. Girls basketball is consistently ranked, in the city. I think our band has been to the state competition three years in a row.’

Bolden says last year, former Cardinals athletes earned $5 million in college grant money. His own son Joe is a freshman football player at Michigan, on a full ride. “I could never afford to send him there otherwise,’ he says.

“The value of public education is being attacked,’ says Lisa Sanders. She has lived in the district 13 years. Her husband grew up there. One of her sons is a sophomore drum major at Colerain, and plays sax in the jazz band. Another son is a 7th grader. He also plays the sax.

She teaches in the Wyoming school district. “I don’t really believe people can’t afford $3 a week,’ Sanders says.

There’s the rub. For some, it’s a value judgment: It’s just sports.

Others are tired of tax increases. A few don’t believe Colerain football would stop, even if the levy fails. And $150 is a lot of money right now.

There is something about football, though, in a place such as Colerain. Maybe especially in such a place, where the Homecoming parade stretches for blocks and everyone who’s able is watching and cheering. You can’t put a dollar figure on the precious stitch that adds to the community fabric.

Or maybe you can.

We’re about to find out.