My son just announced that after his first cross-country meet tomorrow, he would be watching the first NFL game – on Thursday evening.

For him, the real sports season is starting. But which sport is it? High school cross country or watching the NFL on Thursday, college football on Saturday, more NFL on Sunday and Sunday evening, and again on Monday evening?

The saturation coverage of professional football (and that includes college) would lead you to think that sports was just professional entertainment used to boost the sales of high-definition television, beer and cars.

We have a particular fixation in our country with the people at the very top of their profession. We shower them with media, money and tremendous expectations. We know about Shaun Alexander’s courtship. We all remember Seneca Wallace’s tremendous over-the-shoulder catch in the NFC championship.

That is all fine and dandy. But our myopic focus on the biggest and boldest football players pushes to the sidelines people who pursue athletics for pure challenge and fun, for good health and for the friends you make when you are running, throwing the football or anchoring a swimming relay.

This focus makes us think that by watching sports, we are somehow participating. No wonder that more than 20 percent of adults in our state were obese in 2004, up from less than 10 percent in 1987.

This is a bad habit many of us have fallen into. But it is not inevitable. Within certain limits, we can determine our own fitness, if we choose to. Last weekend I decided to try a triathlon. I had to follow my wife’s example. So I was in a low-key event, swimming, bicycling and running on Orcas Island.

About 70 of us showed up on Sunday morning before Labor Day. One woman I talked with was a nurse from Everett. She was a proselytizing triathlete. She told me that a group of her friends got together and decided that they had had it with being overweight and were going to do something about it. They chose to become triathletes. She had lost a lot of weight, had gained a tremendous amount of confidence and was a lot healthier and happier.

She assured me I would have a great time. And I did. And she did.

How do we get this idea of good health and sports ingrained into us? For many of us, it starts with high school athletics. High schools give kids a chance to prove to themselves that they can block a rusher, run three miles in less than 25 minutes, or serve up one ace and then another. And high school sports teach kids that sometimes they miss that tackle, they start out a cross-country race too fast and fizz out after two miles or they just keep hitting the ball into the net.

That is exactly why sports is best exemplified by the high school students who will be participating in volleyball, cross country, tennis, swimming, soccer and, yes, football programs this fall. It is not all about the fastest, the strongest and the best. It is also about the kids who come in last, who lose a tennis game 6-1, or who the coach sends into a game for only a couple of plays.

That is, high school sports are about all of us.

Ballard High School, where my son runs cross country, gets only $14,000 for 19 sports. More than one out of three students participates on sport teams – that’s more than 500 students, or about $28 per student per year. That’s not much for uniforms, coaching stipends and transportation.

We have this fixation on WASL tests, but we also know that sports evens out the playing field for some kids left behind on exam day. It is an equal opportunity avenue for success and advancement. It is something every kid can be part of.

We need to increase funding for sports, not cut that opportunity. So when we consider de-funding our public schools with Initiative 920, let’s remember who we are hurting.

That would be our kids and ourselves. Because we all can be participants in sports, well into old age. We all can be players, thanks to high school sports that plant the seeds for lifelong athletics and good health.

John Burbank, executive director of the Economic Opportunity Institute (www.eoionline.org), writes every other Wednesday. Write to him in care of the institute at 1900 Northlake Way, Suite 237, Seattle, WA 98103. His e-mail address is john@eoionline.org.