Children’s health on UNLV chopping block

It was a 14-word paragraph in yet another long story about budget cuts this week, a seemingly small piece to a large puzzle on how best to slice more than $10 million from the bottom line at UNLV.

But it's not a small issue.

It's a disturbing one that keeps getting worse.

There are times I don't envy Neal Smatresk and the difficult decisions that come with wearing the hat of a university president, times it must be dreadful sitting in his chair, times that surely weigh on him far more than debating whether he should paint his face red when attending an NCAA Tournament game.

Of the cuts announced this week, the university's Sports Education Leadership program was among those recommended for elimination.

Have you heard we might be surrounded by the first generation of children not to outlive its parents?

This cut strikes directly to the point.

"We really have to take a stand as a community to say we must have physical fitness in our schools so in the future we don't see more 40-year-olds having strokes or losing generations of kids to chronic cardiovascular disease," said Monica Lounsbery, chairwoman of the Sports Education Leadership department. "Our department is shaped around the philosophy of doing everything we can to prepare research practitioners to work with people in physical activity."

In other words, to properly educate those who fight things such as childhood obesity with every push-up and pull-up imaginable.

It's not just one department at UNLV. It's the overcrowded programs in K-12 within the Clark County School District, the P.E. classes with 70 to 100 kids in them. It is the constant threat of eliminating high school sports or adopting a pay-to-play system. It is not offering a comprehensive middle school athletic program throughout Southern Nevada. It is persistent downsizing by local parks and recreation departments.

Lounsbery is correct in saying we are not a city built for active transportation. It's unsafe to ride a bike on most streets. Kids don't move enough. More and more, they are being treated for things such as Type 2 diabetes and heart disease. That wasn't the case 20 years ago.

"It," Lounsbery said, "is criminal.

What it really is: A frightening mindset that has set in at all levels of education, that for some reason, many of the first programs cut usually involve those trying to make this state less sedentary at the youth level.

Every state owns a need for strong administrative leadership in sport, but when you consider how fast and how much the population of Nevada has grown, few, if any, need it more.

Leaders who are born from the very program UNLV cut this week.

None of this is easy. Budgets must be trimmed. Programs must be sacrificed. Tough choices must be made.

But at what point does the health of our children become more important?

Lounsbery's department is the only one of its kind in the state where physical education teachers and coaches are trained, where students are taught how best to handle the responsibilities of ensuring kids don't think of exercise as how fast their fingers can move the Xbox controller.

"I was around for the exponential growth in Las Vegas and CCSD, and there just weren't enough people in place to properly lead on the athletics side of things in the schools," said John Barnes, a former assistant trainer at UNLV who received his master's from the university in kinesiology and now is an assistant professor of sports administration at New Mexico. "Cutting these kind of programs will only make it worse. It will hurt the community a lot more than people probably think.

"It's sad. We have to provide ways for kids to grow and learn and be healthy, which includes physical activity. I wouldn't want to be (Smatresk). It's a really tough spot to be in. It's just disappointing to know this is one of the ways they're going. This decision is going to have long-lasting effects."

It's bigger than one committee and one university president and one Board of Regents. It's a serious problem getting worse.

"When you consider what is happening in Washington and the emphasis being put on getting kids moving around the country, it's not palpable to me to think Nevada would not deal with these issues," Lounsbery said. "It's unfathomable to me we won't have this (program at UNLV)."

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ed Graney can be reached at egraney@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4618.