When I was in high school, the track team gave me more than a cardboard box of medal and plaques in my basement. I gained confidence and grit that carried me into adulthood. I’ve always been a huge supporter of sports for kids for that reason. But, lately, there have been a series of disturbing stories about high school sports.

All those knocks to the brain in football makes me question whether or not that sport should exist. Soccer goalies may be getting cancer from the artificial turf.

And there’s all the weird and inappropriate behavior that happens in the locker room. A local football team was doing pretty awful things to the freshman on the team.

My oldest kid is on the high school cross country team. He’s a sophomore who is running on the varsity team. They do eight miles every day. His coach just chewed him out for skipping the Sunday practice. I thought that running seven days a week was excessive, so I told him to skip Sundays. The coach didn’t like that and cursed him out after practice this week.

People need to chill out.