Should The Boys Ranch Football Team Be Allowed to Play 3A Ball In Arizona? By Tom Danehy WHEN BLUE RIDGE High School squeaked out a 22-20 victory on a last-second field goal, it marked the third straight Arizona Class 3A state football championship for the school. Blue Ridge is nestled in the picturesque White Mountains. More importantly for many people affiliated with the mid-sized schools throughout the state, it kept the forces of darkness at bay for at least one more year. For you see, the barely-vanquished in that title game was the Arizona Boys Ranch, a collection of underage felons and overage misdemeanants which has caught the fancy of some Arizonans and raised the ire of many others. Making its second consecutive appearance in the state title game in only its third year of varsity competition, the Boys Ranch, a last-chance facility for teenage criminals from all over the country, is being held up as a beacon of hope by its backers. That view is less than unanimous. Its critics are many and the number is growing. Not coincidentally, that number grows with each Boys Ranch victory on the football field. And with the Boys Ranch apparently locked on to a solid formula for athletic success, it's a sore spot which is only going to get worse. The Arizona Boys Ranch started out as an orphanage. It was incorporated in 1949 by the Phoenix Rotary Club. Howard Pyle, who would go on to become governor of the state, saw the Boys Ranch as a place to house kids who had gone wrong, but not so wrong as to earn themselves a trip to the infamous juvenile facility at Fort Grant. On donated land in Queen Creek, a desolate spot of the Sonoran Desert about 35 miles southwest of Phoenix, the private, non-profit organization opened for "business" in 1951. Two decades later, it was home to more than 100 boys and was hailed as a model facility for troubled youth. In 1971, as societal moods softened, the Boys Ranch got hit hard with criticism that its policy on corporal punishment was harsh and outdated. The Arizona Department of Child Protective Services (CPS) has been on the Boys Ranch's back like ugly on an ape ever since. Still, it thrived and its enrollment increased steadily. Other states began sending kids to the Ranch, where they'd have one chance to change their ways. Either they'd get with the program--which includes strict discipline, hard work and steady progress toward a high-school diploma--or it was the slammer. To the Ranch's credit, a large majority get with, and stay with, the program. By the early 1990s, the Ranch had gone from simply offering classes which led to some of the kids earning their GED high-school equivalency papers to being a full-fledged high school which could award diplomas, and as a bonus, compete with Arizona's other high schools on the athletic field. When the Boys Ranch applied to the Arizona Interscholastic Association (AIA) for membership, there was more than a small amount of hand-wringing and teeth-gnashing. But the Ranch met the criteria, and so they were allowed to join the 3A ranks. (Arizona, like most states, divides its schools into classifications according to enrollment). The 3A class includes 32 schools, from Monument Valley, up near Utah, to Sahuarita, south of Tucson. It was thought the Boys Ranch would be placed in the 3A South Division, along with relatively nearby schools. But the AIA placed the school in the 3A East, a monster division that has produced the last 12 state champions. Yeah, you guys can play, but you're gonna get whupped for a while and see how you like it. Funny thing is, they didn't. They started winning right away. Some thought it odd to see the retired Frank Kush out there, as titular head of the football program. Kush had used a stern, no-nonsense approach to build Arizona State into a national power, only to see that same approach lead to his downfall after a helmet-grabbing incident with a player led to a public outcry. Now Kush would be instilling that same approach at the Ranch. The Spartans have come a long way in a short time, and not everybody's happy with that. It would be nice to root around for euphemisms, but the simple fact is some parents don't want their kids competing against thugs, criminals and attempted murderers. Others feel the big-city kids at the Ranch are bigger, faster (and maybe even older) than their small-town Arizona counterparts. The mostly-minority Boys Ranch's games against the mostly-Mormon teams from places like Snowflake have been uniformly clean, sportsmanlike, and free from racial overtones. But let the Ranch win a title and then watch the compost hit the windmill. Some coaches feel the Boys Ranch should be bumped up to Class 4A or 5A, where they'd have to compete against the big schools from Phoenix and Tucson. But the AIA can't force a school to move up out of its enrollment classification. (Some Catholic schools, which can recruit, "play up." Tucson's Amphi, which should be in 4A, is probably the only public school in the state which "plays up.") The Boys Ranch won the state 3A track championship last year by a scary margin, and its players are making strides on the basketball court. But here in Arizona, football's the thing. It doesn't look as though Blue Ridge can hold the Spartans at bay forever. As soon as the Spartans win a state football crown, there's going to be hell to pay. This is one of those pesky "adult" issues, where both sides have valid arguments, and the adult, unfortunately, is able to see the merits of both. Most of us believe in competition and all of us believe in rehabilitation, but this situation comes perilously close to rewarding bad behavior and punishing good. This isn't The Longest Yard, where lovable misfits win the Big Game against the sadistic guards. These are real thugs who pumped real bullets into real people. Do they deserve another chance? Probably. Do they deserve it on the football field? Only maybe.

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