Saturday, June 14, 2008

What the Heck is Going with the UW Tennis Team?

A grades report came out on the various GPAs of UWs various athletic teams. (Summarized here.) As you'd expect, rowers are the big smarty pants, though the UW basketball team continues to redeem itself from the ignominy of the Spring of '06, and posted the second best GPA of all men's teams. And team with the lowest GPA was not a shocker. Ask yourself... which UW team produces the most professionals who leave school early and which team attracts young men who's intellectual abilities may be, um, a bit, um, lacking? Plus, which team gets hit in the head a lot? If you guess men's hockey, you were right. That team brings in loads of kids who are playing in semi-pro leagues and is constantly losing kids early to the NHL, so that's no surprise. Plus, the team is full of Canadians. I think they use a different alphabet up there.

And you'd think football would be next worse, for all the typical reasons, right? Big team, lots of kids from iffy school districts, lots of kids whose career dreams are focused on the pros, lots of pressure and attention. Negative. For some bizarre reason, the Tennis team has worse grades than the football team. Who could have guessed? The kids who played tennis at my high school were the kind of guys who took viola lessons on the side and enrolled in advanced science seminar physics second semester of senior year. They were a bit high-strung and very competitive-- not the type of guys to totally slough off in school. This makes you wonder-- what goes on over at Nielsen? Do they need an in-tennis-facility study center?

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