With each passing year the list of student athletes and professional ball players from Marion County continues to get bigger and bigger.
When I first started the “Next Level” agate in the sports section in 2018, I was keeping track of a total of 25 student athletes and professionals in football, baseball and softball. When you added in other sports that don’t really work for a stat agate such as tennis, archery and cheerleading, there were 31 athletes hailing from the county.
Shortly after the “Next Level” began, I wrote a column detailing how many more athletes were on the way to being added to that list and how astounding the numbers in Marion County were when compared to the rest of the country. Three years ago, there were 45 athletes who qualified for that column, which translated to 1 in 24 students in Marion County making it to the next level, by far surpassing the national average of 1 in 54, according to the NCAA. That was a theoretical statistic at the time, with Marion County’s real average being 1 in 35 students.
But now, the numbers are even more remarkable. There are 65 athletes from Marion County who have reached the next level and are currently playing either collegiate or professional sports — 22 in football, 20 in baseball or softball, 11 tennis, six in cheer, four basketball, one archer and a track star. That translates to 1 in 17 students from the county reaching the next level, more than three times the national average.
If you want to include the current high school seniors who have either signed a scholarship or will be signing in the coming months, that adds 12 more players to the list. With six current college players set to graduate this year, that would up next year’s total to 71 or 1 in 15.
Think about that for just a moment. Marion County’s athletes are three to nearly four times more likely to reach the next level than the rest of the country. When I wrote the original column, I theorized that the reason so many athletes made it to college or the professional ranks was the opportunity they receive at such a young age in high school was a big help.
I said, “Where I think the difference lies is at the high school level. Most communities the size of Marion County have one large high school or two medium sized schools. Here, there are four legitimate options… That provides prep athletes with more opportunity not only to play at the varsity level but get valuable experience as underclassmen. … Where I grew up in Louisiana, it was a rare occurrence for any freshmen to even be called up to varsity and even then they didn’t play. Very few sophomores got the chance to play varsity as well. But here it’s commonplace for underclassmen to gain experience at a young age, and they are able to learn on the job while getting more one-on-one coaching with smaller roster sizes. It provides athletes with great opportunities to showcase their skills to colleges for multiple years as opposed to just one or two. That, along with the abundance of natural talent, makes all the difference.”
In that same column, though, I dismissed youth athletics as being a contributing factor because I believed every community had similar programs. But that’s just not true. So many youth teams in Columbia win state championships every year, which just isn’t a coincidence. There just has to be something to the way this community cares about and fosters young talent.
It goes beyond the field or court, too. Marion County sends an absurd amount of students to college every year compared to other communities in both the state and the country. Part of that is the abundance of junior college opportunities, but another huge part is the job done by the schools’ administrators, counselors and teachers being so proactive in making sure students qualify.
There are thousands of student athletes every year that don’t go on to play in college because they don’t qualify academically. Sure, there is the occasional player who has a problem with it Marion County as well, but it’s far less likely, which brings me to the point.
The way this community cares for its children, from the time they are born through when it’s time for them to go off to college is the reason why Marion County sends so many more student athletes to the next level. And that’s something to be extremely proud of. n
Joshua Campbell is managing editor of The Columbian-Progress. Reach him via email at joshuacampbell@columbianprogress.com or call (601) 736-2611.
