Fans react to a shot from the floor during the boys’ Scho-Burgh match-up between Middleburgh and Schoharie. MCS won, 58-44, but at our small, rural schools, sports are as much about teaching life-lessons as winning. *Though winning is the goal too.*

Arm-in-arm, MCS athletes and coaches stand for the National Anthem.

Fueled by fans’ fire, the excitement went right down to the wire:

58-44, with Middleburgh Central School taking home the Scho-Burgh trophy.

Actually, keeping it, thank you very much.

Basketball champions of the Battle of the Valley, two years running.

That fan fire–music, signs, green (Middleburgh) and blue (Schoharie) shirts, cheering, and chants–was all part of the Friday night fun in the SUNY Cobleskill gym. In the stands? Parents, alumni, teachers and staff–including 2024 New York State Secondary School Principal of the Year Matt Sloane (he’s MCS’s Junior/Senior High School guy) with his daughter.

Because, after all, in sports, winning and the bragging rights that go with it, matter.

But what matters just as much at MCS? To its admins, Athletic Department, and coaches?

Scho-Burgh fans—hundreds filled the stands—mug for the camera.

The life lessons that sports–and often losing–teach student-athletes.

That’s how AD Gregg Johns–boys’ soccer coach, and before he passed the torch to Justin Hamm three seasons ago, longtime hoops coach–sees Middleburgh’s sports culture..

“That’s how I grew up. The idea of life lessons. The lessons you take with you after high school. How to commit. Responsibility. Putting other people’s needs ahead of your own. Even the confidence that sports teaches you. How to handle yourself. There’s a lot.”

“You used to say it all the time,” Hamm says. “Sports help prepare kids for what’s sometimes the harshness of life. How to respond to adversity when things don’t go your way.”

“Your value isn’t because you play sports,” Johns adds. “You are an individual who has value. This is something you do. You’re more than an athlete.”

MCS Coach Justin Hamm credits his mentor, Athletic Director Gregg Johns, for showing him what really matters when it comes to high school sports: life lessons.

It doesn’t even have to be sports.

Drama.

Music.

FFA.

They all teach the same life lessons.

Though for Johns and Hamm and MCS–it’s sports.

How exactly do they do it?

Who was in the stands with his daughter? 2024 Principal of the Year Matt Sloane.

Deliberately and intentionally.

Hamm: “We tell them. My basketball team hears every day that I love them.”

There’s also team meals. Breakfast at Johns’. $1 Wing Night at Locomotions–memories that outlast the pain of losses. “I watched Gregg do this.”

Johns: "Authenticity. I don’t think people give teens enough credit. But that authenticity has to be deliverable. And it goes both ways. Most kids, if you set a standard, they’ll step up and meet it.”

Hamm: “Being positive male role models. Finding that balance between pushing them and being there for them…”

Both men point out that very few MCS athletes–boys or girls, soccer, basketball, volleyball, softball, baseball, or bowling–will end up playing sports in college. But they will take what they learn from them into their careers.

Johns: “It’s the value that it contributes to their life.”

All of it, it’s something small schools like Middleburgh–and Schoharie, Cobleskill-Richmondville, Sharon Springs, Gilboa-Conesville, Jefferson–offer than big school can’t. (Also, there’s not a lot of sitting on the bench. Because when your schools are small, everyone plays.)

Johns: “I value the small community. These kids know us outside of school as parents, community members…We see the good stuff in their lives, the peaks as well as the valleys. I wouldn’t trade that for the world. There’s a lot more to being a high school athlete than winning. What are they going to take away? That we care about them.”

Both of his sons–Andrew and Austin–played under him, so he knows firsthand the value of those lessons.

Hamm, who’s just added to his own family, is taking the lessons he’s learned from his mentor to heart. “Gregg and I are both from small schools. We played under the kind of coaches we want to be. Small schools instill life lessons.”

But again, that winning.

Because that’s sports too.

And for all of the MCS fans in the SUNY Cobleskill gym for that Scho-Burgh victory?

A reason to celebrate.