The Past and Future of Sports at NP3

A student comments at a 2011 Natomas Unified school board meeting in favor of the multi-school agreement which allowed charter school students to play prep sports at Natomas and Inderkum high schools. / NatomasBuzz.com Photo

By NP3 Beginning Journalism
for The Pacific Times

For more than a decade NP3 High students have not participated in prep sports, but that’s going to change if Jonathan Brinkmann has his way. Even if it is sport by sport.

Last year, NP3 debuted its first league sports team, cross country, and this year, the Pirate Basketball Association. Brinkmann hopes the basketball association will become a high school league team by 2026 as part of a slow rollout of sports teams at NP3.

Brinkmann said that now the focus is on female sports, and the request is volleyball.

“I mean, we have a large volleyball club that we’ve run in the past, so yeah, I would say volleyball and soccer are the next two,” he explained. “’It’s more just time, people signing up, putting time into it and they will probably be started in what we have set up for basketball right now.”

Brinkmann is not the only person on campus looking forward to integrating sports into the NP3 community. NP3 high school students who play competitive sports outside of school also support the move.

“I would play soccer if we had a team…because it would bring school spirit to our school.” — Colby Durham

“I would play soccer if we had a team…because it would bring school spirit to our school,” said sophomore Colby Durham, who plays competitive soccer. “Also, when my teammates have their high school season, I don’t have any soccer to do, and I have to do it on my own. So if we had sports here, then I would be able to be in a high school league as well.”

Delycia Brodnax, a sophomore at NP3 who plays volleyball outside of school, said that being able to play volleyball at school “would make me want to come to school more and be engaged.”

“More people would come to this school,” Brodnax explained, “because a lot of people left so they could go to a high school that has sports.”

The desire to play sports is not new for students at NP3.

When NP3 High School opened, a multi-school agreement with the California Interscholastic Federation allowed its students to play on other Natomas Unified School District school sports teams.

But that practice ended on March 10, 2011, according to Natomas Unified School District board of trustee meeting minutes. The district was facing a financial receivership and hoped to avoid a state takeover by attracting students to its traditional high schools and with them state funding. The district also felt that limiting sports to only their students would increase the number of students attending district secondary schools.

At the time, NP3 leadership decided not to begin its own sports program.

“…at that time, we were a smaller school, so we didn’t really have enough players to put together a full competitive team.” —Principal Mori

“Running a sports program is incredibly expensive, so it takes away resources from academics, classes, staffing, and teachers,” principal Melissa Mori explained. “So, we wanted to prioritize our academic program over sports, and having a sports program would make it really difficult for us to do all these things that we are allowed to do.”

Added Mori, “Also, at that time, we were a smaller school, so we didn’t really have enough players to put together a full competitive team. So some of it had to do with the size of our school, some of it had to do with coaches, some of it had to do with money. But, the most important reason was…our commitment to being a college-prep school.”

Students like Durham think that adding sports will make NP3 an even better school.

“We would be able to have a more movie-like high school experience with football games,” she said.

Jasmeet Cheema and Mansehaj Kaur contributed to this report.