Celebrating a Thriving Middle School League

If the Great Hearts Arizona Middle School League were a scholar, it would be entering its junior year.  The league, which began in 2008 with only six Great Hearts Academies, has grown to 33 schools with over 350 teams competing.

Great Hearts Arizona Director of Athletics, Jon Rickey, credits much of the growth and success of the league to Rich Polley, who arrived at Chandler Prep in the fall of 2008 as Athletic Director, after serving in the same role at Tempe Prep since 1999.  Besides building the middle school athletic program, Polley was responsible for writing the original Athletic Director Handbook, creating cohesion, and a consistent approach to athletics among the Great Hearts Academies.

Few charter schools offer competitive athletics, let alone a comprehensive middle school program.  Rickey and Polley agree that this is largely due to the common obstacles that must be overcome when working with middle school athletes.  The three obstacles are the limited availability of field and gym space, difficulty finding officials who can be paid more for officiating high school sports, and the lower attendance numbers for middle school sporting events (which typically translates into smaller budgets).

Great Hearts coaches and athletic directors have had to be creative.  They shared gym space with churches and arrived at off-site soccer fields early in the morning in order to paint lines for makeshift football fields. They altered seasons so they would be playing sports at the opposite time as others, freeing up gym and field spaces.  They started their own pool of officials to use exclusively for the middle school league, so they no longer had to compete with high school sports for officiating.  They did whatever needed to be done to make the league possible for these young athletes in the early days of Great Hearts, when the challenges required extra ingenuity.

Within the first few years, Great Hearts began to acquire facilities with their own gyms and field spaces.  Once other schools expressed a desire to join the league, it became apparent that finding schools that were like-minded with the philosophies at Great Hearts was important.  The ideals and academic structure of the classroom visibly translated to the integrity of the teams and how they conducted themselves on the field.

Scholar athletes and their parents agree the journey has been worthwhile.

What began 15 years ago under the direction of founding Great Hearts Athletic Directors with the devoted assistance of many families, faculty and staff is still being carried out today.  The middle school league continues to build and practice the virtues on the field and court throughout the Valley now, and for many years to come.