Metro High Actually Good at Sports?

Metro High Actually Good at Sports?

I don't usually read the sports section of any paper, but a headline in this week's St. Louis American caught my eye.

"Metro High answers last-minute call" was about my alma mater, Metro High School, participating in the 25th Annual Shootout, held at Savvis Center, of the big high school boys' basketball teams. They were invited at the last minute when an out-of-town team cancelled.

The article noted that the gym at Metro was being used for a dance recital, so the coach, named Michael Brown, had to get access to Beaumont's gym for practice.

The most interesting quote is at the end of the story:

"We know Vashon and those other guys are widely respected for what their programs are, as they should be. But sometimes some of the rest of us in the PHL [Public High League] get a bad rep. We just wanted to show that there's a bunch of good all over the PHL. Our kids are smart. They dress well and speak well. They study hard. And they play hard. And hopefully something like this will be a stepping stone to some great things in the future."

The thing that was weird about this story, though, is that the team was called "the Phoenix." Back in my day (wow, do I feel old), Metro's mascot was the Panther. Actually, the logo looked very similar to that of the Black Panther Party. I always thought that was pretty cool!

And a Post-Dispatch article from earlier this week refers to the Metro Panthers girls' basketball team. So, maybe somebody was just confused.

Panthers sounds like a much more fitting logo than Phoenix for Metro, anyway? Phoenix to me suggests 'rising from the ashes' of the inner-city, which is not such an empowering connotation.

I played on the Metro boys' cross-country and boys' tennis teams during my time there, although I wasn't really any good at either sport. Still, it was good experience in trying to improve my social skills and my motor skills. Not sure I succeeded at either one, however....

Anyway, the girls' team mentioned in the Post won their game 58-17 over Clayton.

The boys' team mentioned in the American lost to Champaign Central 86-47. But the article says "the final outcome didn't matter much to any of Metro's fans who cheered wildly throughout the entire game."