photo by: Conner Becker/Journal-World

Bishop Seabury's 2012 girls substate runner-up banner hangs in the school gymnasium. Seabury hopes to offer the sport again next winter.

While eight of the area’s high school basketball teams experienced the whirlwind of postseason play this week, there’s one school that didn’t lace up for its shot at state. In August, Bishop Seabury Academy temporarily, and regretfully, placed girls hoops on the shelf.

The final decision came after just six students checked “girls basketball” on their extracurricular forms. Seabury, which enrolled just under 200 students this fall, requires all of its students to participate in at least two activities, including school clubs such as forensics or debate.

Seabury athletic director Brian Rios, a University of Kansas graduate and former volleyball graduate assistant at Oral Roberts, told the Journal-World the time commitment and the presence of club sports can make it an uphill battle to field a team.

“For small schools in the state of Kansas, you just have to be able to participate in more than one activity,” Rios said. “Our city is a little different in the fact that, with Kansas City being so close, club sports take on a lot of that.”

As of 2019, the NCAA reported that 91% of basketball student-athletes played both high school and club basketball. The game has endured a 6% overall drop-off in youth sports since the pandemic, according to the nonprofit Project Play, which reported a 15% increase in basketball participation from 2019 to 2022 among ages 6 to 17.

Adapting to increasing single-sport specialization is ultimately what’s going to allow basketball and other threatened sports to survive, Seabury director of development Ellen Chindamo said. A KU graduate, Chindamo spent 12 years in higher education funding and previously served as the senior director of donor relations for KU Endowment.

“The youth is getting into their particular sport so young that, a lot of times, it is a club sport,” Chindamo said. “But I don’t think basketball’s done.”

Rios warns of a higher burnout rate for student-athletes seeking recruiting visibility through sports specialization.

“You find a lot of college coaches that really love to see kids do all kinds of sports and all the types of activities and diversity in their physical abilities,” Rios said.

“We work really hard, as a small school, to field teams kids want to have,” he added. “We’ve had swim teams with one kid who swims. We had a golf team where we had one golfer … We had a girl golfer a few years ago who won at state, placing at state all four years.”

photo by: Conner Becker/Journal-World

Bishop Seabury Academy made a tough call to cancel its girls basketball program for the 2023-24 school year due to multiple factors, including a lack of interest and growing club sports.

Club basketball, or the added experience of specializing in one sport, is in fact benefiting Seabury in some ways. The school’s boys basketball program, which features multiple club players on its varsity roster, recently finished its regular season as Kaw Valley Conference champions with a 14-4 regular-season record, and on Thursday the Seabury boys narrowly escaped Burlingame 57-55 to advance to the substate title game.

“We’ve sold out a lot of our (boys basketball) games and people were asking, you know, ‘Where’s our girls basketball team and are we going to have another one?” Rios said.

Seabury’s girls finished their 2022-23 regular-season campaign 0-11 and lost two key starters to graduation.

Seabury senior Vivian Hill, a Journal-World All-Area volleyball honorable mention and club volleyball player, first played basketball in middle school before joining the high school team.

Hill said she felt the absence of basketball this semester, even if it opened up time for new experiences like cheerleading.

“I wanted to play all the sports, I wanted to try everything this year,” Hill said. “I’m not normally a cheerleader, and I like being on the court doing some aggressive competitiveness.

“That was a little bit disappointing not to have the girls that want to play. Even if it wasn’t for me, it’s disappointing that girls don’t want to be out there and play basketball.”

Part of the challenge for Seabury is simply a numbers game when accounting for playing time and injuries – two things that could easily derail the season of a six-player basketball roster.

Still, Rios said a return for girls basketball is in the works for next season, with 15 current middle school basketball players expected to round out the numbers. Simultaneously, volleyball, soccer, cross country, track and field, tennis and golf are each expected to return.

Rios and Chindamo, following parent inquiries from the middle school team, organized new uniforms and an upcoming summer basketball camp. Seabury also enlisted its head boys basketball coach, Trey Johnson, to get more players in the building.

“We’re gonna make it happen,” Rios said.

Those interested in participating in the upcoming summer camp can inquire about details at hsgirls_basketball@seaburyacademy.org.