Spring Lake High School will offer a new elective class starting in Fall of 2024: “The History of Sports.” Jim Warren, who has taught history at Spring Lake for 25 years, will teach the class. 

“Mr Army came to the social studies department and said we had room to add different classes, and one he suggested was history of sports — and my hand just shot up and I said, ‘I’ll teach that,'” Warren said. “It took me just a couple of minutes to come up with the whole outline of what I wanted to teach.” 

The curriculum will include going back into world history and the origin of competitive sports. The class will cover the Greeks and Olympic Games to knights in the Middle Ages to Native Americans and lacrosse. 

Beyond that, one unit will cover the five major sports: soccer, baseball, basketball, hockey, football. It will answer questions on where those games came from, what their original rules were and how the rules changed to present day. Other units will include women in sports and great cultural moments in the U. S. and the world. 

“I’ve been a coach for 36 years and love to follow sports,” Warren said. “Sports are bigger than ever today, and I thought it would be really fun to look back and teach kids things they didn’t know about the past and get them more excited about the sports they like.”

While the class is open to students of all high school grade levels, there are only a limited number of spots due to the fact that it is an elective class.