Question for all the kids today.

To the children of the Eastern Connecticut Conference, Southeastern Connecticut Athletic Conference, North Central Connecticut Conference, Shoreline Conference and whatever other conference du jour your elders decide is suitable for you in the coming weeks:

What do you think of the adults today? You know. All the administrators, coaches and various suits entrusted with creating an athletic environment for you that is fun, fair and familial.

How about all my pals in Waterford: What say you about a potential future in which you don't play East Lyme and New London, but you maintain those throw-out-the-record rivalries with Plainfield and Griswold?

It is an entirely fair question, by the way.

Because this is high school sports in our corner of the world now.

Fractured, fraudulent.

Our village green has been torched.

I hate it all.

And it's making me wonder if the people responsible for this - every single last one of them - could run a garage sale, let alone high school athletics.

We've been awash in institutional melodrama for some time now. And not that the kids matter anymore, but have any of these people paused to ponder what the kids might glean from all this?

Try this: You sit at the same table, look each other in the eye and agree to move forward as a league. And then you act otherwise, with neither the courtesy nor the stones to tell your colleagues face to face. What lesson does that teach the kids? No wonder why they think it's OK now to break up with their significant others via text message.

Or this: You purport teaching them the concepts of greater good and shared burdens. And yet your actions, dripping with vindictiveness and self-indulgence, scream that you're all a big bunch of frauds.

There is no more communal center of high school sports anymore around here. Two different leagues. Perhaps more to come. Now comes the saddest part: People to whom we pay some hefty salaries were unable to sit around a table and preserve rivalries and traditions that have endured decades. It's become personal now. And the collateral damage: the kids. Always the kids.

But it's because of the kids that we move forward. And it's time, once again, for the following plea: Base your decisions on the true best interests of the kids, not what you've rationalized them to be.

I don't blame Ledyard, East Lyme, New London and Fitch for leaving. Hell, a dozen other schools threatened to do so. They were just organized enough to pull it off. Now they have a four-school league that, at the moment, will rely on a scheduling alliance with the Southern Connecticut Conference to fill its schedules.

It's an intriguing league. The competition will be greater and fairer with - glory hallelujah - no more opt outs.

Here, though, is where "best interests of the kids" enters the discourse.

Norwich Free Academy and Waterford are too good to remain in the existing ECC. The best interests of their kids - and this has been reinforced through several conversations with parents in recent days - suggests both schools belong in the SCAC. It preserves rivalries, requires fewer games with the SCC and would ultimately save on time and transportation.

I get that NFA was shunned. I didn't like it. Still don't. I get there are hard feelings. And they are irrelevant. Your bruised ego and their shortsightedness are of no consequence in relation to the best and most competitive environment for the kids.

Waterford belongs with East Lyme and New London. Period. That's who the kids want to play. Just ask them. No, really. It's OK to ask the kids. They count. And they'll tell you they want the competition.

I'd make the same argument for Stonington. Here's why: High school sports have always followed the same rhythms: You are good in some sports and not in others. Stonington would be a solid member of the SCAC. Field hockey, lacrosse and tennis would be successful. I'd argue that A.J. Massengale's string of winning seasons in football count for something, too.

Instead, I'm sensing giddiness that Ledyard, New London, Fitch and East Lyme are gone.

Except that's who your kids want to play.

The kids.

Let's start thinking about them.

For once.

This is the opinion of Day sports columnist Mike DiMauro.

Twitter: @BCgenius