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January 17, 2001

It is the Building, not the Teachers, that bothers Beaver

By TOM WILLIAMS
Sports Columnist

For a little over a year now, the Gazette has been offering profiles of some selected senior athletes at Ocean City High School. We ask them about their opinions, their likes and their dislikes - things most of us don't know about them just from watching them compete.

Last week, in the Ocean City Gazette, there was a misprint. Bruce Beaver told us in his written response that the thing he would most like to change about OCHS was the facility. But we read it as "faculty".

Needless to say, there were some teachers at the high school who were interested in Beaver's explanation.

He told us that he believes that the faculty at Ocean City High School is the finest group of individuals with which he has ever been associated. He just hopes that he can live up to the level of dedication and integrity that they have demonstrated during his four years at the school.

Or something like that!

But, since Beaver brought it up, it is interesting how many of these senior profiles have included dissatisfaction with the building that serves as home to them for six or seven hours each weekday.

The really sad thing is that this is nothing new. In the early 1980s the roof of the high school gym was already a problem. It has steadily gotten worse until they now are regularly forced to make the ridiculous announcement that a freshmen basketball game has been postponed by rain.

You all know that there have been three referendums to solve most of the high school's facility problems. And all three were voted down, though one lost by just a couple of votes. The hunch here is that too many of those negative voters just want the kids out of town so they don't have to deal with them.

Of course, if the high school is moved to Upper Township, the traffic into Ocean City will become the traffic into Petersburg. Without that traffic, gas stations, delis, news stands, pharmacies and many more businesses in this fair resort might find it more difficult to stay open throughout the winter months. And that will hurt everybody.

But, votes are private expressions of each person's opinion, regardless of the reason. They all count equally. Unless, of course, George W. Bush gets his friends on the Supreme Court to stop the count.

Beaver and his classmates were probably not born when the problems started in that high school. They certainly got worse in the 1990s and very little, if anything, was done to solve them. Too much concern was focused on zero budget increases instead of improving what was needed.

In five months, the Class of 2001 will graduate and a new freshmen class will enter Ocean City High School four months after that, forced to deal with facilities that are greatly in need of improvement. Quite frankly, the Board of Education and administration owes an apology to these seniors (and about nine or 10 classes that came before them), along with their parents and teachers.

For all the wrong reasons, they have failed to fulfill their basic obligation - to assure that the students have facilities that are conducive to learning and maturing. More than a decade of students have, instead, simply learned to settle. If Ocean City's students and faculty had not been such overachievers, maybe the public would realize that something needs to be done.

There are many of us who believe that Ocean City High School belongs in Ocean City. And, contrary to what the army of letter writers might have you believe, there are ways to accomplish that.

But, if enough voters in this town have really been permanently persuaded to oppose any school improvement bond, maybe it is time to pursue the Upper Township proposal. The second best plan is, after all, better than no plan at all.

When history looks back on the 1990s it will focus on the inactivity and oversight of our school leaders. Now that we're starting a new century, lets finally do something.

We owe it to Bruce Beaver and thousands of others.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - Ocean City lost another of the good guys last week.

Fred Haack, former football and baseball coach at OCHS, died at the age of 70 in Upper Township.

Haack specialized in following legends. He took over the Raider football program after Fenton Carey stepped down and became baseball coach when Dixie Howell retired. He had been a longtime assistant to Howell.

Haack was one of the best football players to come out of old Egg Harbor City High School, going on to Moravian for a successful college career. He taught and coached at Egg Harbor before coming to Ocean City.

In addition to his coaching on the high school level, Haack also was the first coach of the Ocean City Hawks. The group that created that youth football program wanted to start the kids off with first class coaching. And they got it from him.

Fred Haack has been gone from the Ocean City sports scene for decades. But, upon his death last week, the memories came roaring back.

And they were good memories.

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