High School a Time for Plays of All Kinds
April 2, 2015
By Jack Roberts
MHSAA executive director
At end of season or school year banquets attended by student-athletes and their parents, I often tell this short story about my mother that never fails to get a good laugh, especially from mothers:
“At the end of my junior year of high school I attended the graduation ceremony for the senior class on a hot and humid early June evening in our stuffy high school gymnasium. The bleachers on each side were filled to capacity, as were several hundred folding chairs placed on the gymnasium floor.
“The public address system, which was wonderful for announcing at basketball games or wrestling meets, was awful for graduation speeches. Person after person spoke, and the huge audience wondered what they had to say.
“I was present because I was the junior class president; and as part of the ceremony, the senior class president handed me a small shovel. It had something to do with accepting responsibility or carrying on tradition.
“In any event, the senior class president spoke briefly; and then it was my turn. I stepped to the podium, pushed the microphone to the side, and spoke in a voice that was heard and understood in every corner of the gymnasium.
“Whereupon my mother, sitting in one of the folding chairs, positioned right in front of my basketball coach – who had benched me for staying out too late on the night before a game, because I had to attend a required school play rehearsal – my mother turned around, pointed her finger at the coach and said, ‘See there? That’s what he learned at play practice!’
“And she was heard in every corner of the gymnasium too.
“But my mother knew – she just knew – that for me, play practice was as important as basketball practice. And she was absolutely correct.”
This old but true story about in-season demands of school sports actually raises two of the key issues of the debate about out-of-season coaching rules.
One is that we are not talking only about sports. School policies should not only protect and promote opportunities for students to participate in more than one sport; they should also allow for opportunities for students to participate in the non-athletic activities that comprehensive, full-service schools provide.
This is because surveys consistently link student achievement in school as well as success in later life with participation in both the athletic and non-athletic activities of schools. Proper policies permit students time to study, time to practice and play sports and time to be engaged in other school activities that provide opportunities to learn and grow as human beings.
A second issue the story presents is that parents have opinions about what is best for their children. In fact, they feel even more entitled to express those opinions today than my mother did almost 50 years ago. In fact, today, parents believe they are uniquely entitled to make the decisions that affect their children. And often they take the attitude that everyone else should butt out of their business!
The MHSAA knows from direct experience that while school administrators want tighter controls on what coaches and students do out of season, and that most student-athletes and coaches will at least tolerate the imposed limits, parents will be highly and emotionally critical of rules that interfere with how they raise their children.
No matter the cost in time or money to join elite teams, take private lessons, travel to far-away practices and further-away tournaments, no matter how unlikely any of this provides the college athletic scholarship return on investment that parents foolishly pursue, those parents believe they have every right to raise their own children their own way and that it’s not the MHSAA’s business to interfere.
It is for this very reason that MHSAA rules have little to say about what students can and can’t do out of season. Instead, the rules advise member schools and their employees what schools themselves have agreed should be the limits. The rules do this to promote competitive balance. They do this in order to avoid never-ending escalating expense of time and money to keep up on the competitive playing field, court, pool, etc.
Every example we have of organized competitive sports is that, in the absence of limits, some people push the boundaries as far as they can for their advantage, which forces other people to go beyond what they believe is right in order to keep up.
If, during the discussions on out-of-season rules, someone suggests that certain policies be eliminated, thinking people will pause to ask what life would be like without those rules.
Our outcome cannot be mere elimination of regulation, which invites chaos; the objective must be shaping a different future.
A good start would be simpler, more understandable and enforceable rules. A bad ending would be if it forces more student-athletes and school coaches to focus on a single sport year-round.
Accomplished College Coach Giving Back to HS Track at Salem
By
Doug Donnelly
Special for MHSAA.com
April 23, 2021
PINCKNEY – John Goodridge has coached athletes of just about every level imaginable.
"My passion for coaching is just as high as ever,” said Goodridge, 72, recently named the head boys track & field coach at Salem High School in Canton. “It’s been fun. You really do come full circle.”
It’s been a tremendous coaching journey over the past 50 years for Goodridge, a New York City native. It was not long after retiring from Eastern Michigan University in the fall that Goodridge got the coaching bug again. It started when he began attending cross country meets in the Ann Arbor area. Soon he realized he wanted to continue coaching and spoke to one of his former EMU athletes who was coaching at Salem and had found out the job as boys track coach was going to be open.
"At some point, late in my career, I had the notion that someday I’d come back and coach high school, where it all started,” Goodridge said. “In the fall, after I retired, an EMU alum who coached at Pinckney High School invited me to his home opening cross country meet.
"It was enough being out there and seeing the young kids that it brought me back to 40-50 years ago. I spent the fall, every week, going to various local cross country meets. Just observing, just to see if I thought it was something I wanted to do.”
Ultimately, Salem athletic director Tim Baechler hired Goodridge, who has an incredible resume as a track & field and cross country coach. From coaching Olympic athletes to the United States team at the World University Cross Country Championships in Austria, Goodridge has coached world class athletes and NCAA championship-level contenders for decades.
High school coaches have always had a special place in Goodridge’s heart. One reason is he interacted with coaches from across the country while recruiting athletes to compete for him at Michigan State University (1979-1982), Wake Forest University (1984-1999) and Eastern Michigan (2001-2020). Another reason is that he started out coaching at that level.
"It’s natural,” he said. “A lot of people think college is a higher level and that kind of stuff, but I’ve always told people that being a high school coach is such an important role and opportunity to work with young people.
"In many cases it’s the most special relationship. A high school coach sets the tone. You are introducing the sport to young kids. That’s quite a responsibility.”
Goodridge graduated from Long Island University in 1972. He and wife Francie (Kraker) met in the northeast while working for a shoe company. They returned to her native Ann Arbor while she was an elite world class athlete. Francie ran on U.S. Olympic teams in 1968 and 1972 and owned a world record in 1967.
While in grad school, Francie was offered the position of track coach at Ann Arbor Huron but couldn’t accept it because she was still an amateur athlete and couldn’t profit from that status and remain eligible for the Olympics.
Instead, she suggested to the Huron athletic director that the school hire her husband. His coaching career was launched.
"We were two young people, trying to get through school on part-time jobs,” Goodridge said. “We didn’t even have a car. (Coaching) was a source of income.”
While coaching high school track, they also coached younger athletes on club squads, before moving to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee where they both were hired as coaches – Francie as the women’s track coach and John the men’s. After a short stint there, they returned to Ann Arbor and both took on roles at Ann Arbor Greenhills.
Both coached for years. Goodridge had a long tenure at Wake Forest, coaching both cross country and track & field at a time when the Demon Deacons had unparalleled success in school history with 14 individual Atlantic Coast Conference champions and seven All-Americans. Francie coached at Wake Forest as well.
The couple returned to Michigan in the early 2000s, with Goodridge taking over the Eastern Michigan cross country program and serving as an assistant track coach. He later became the head track coach. During his time at Ypsilanti, he directed numerous Eagles squads in both sports to conference titles. During his distinguished career, he coached conference cross country championship teams in the Mid-American, Big Ten and Atlantic Coast Conferences. He was the MAC Coach of the Year 13 times in cross country and coached 22 NCAA track & field All-Americans.
This season he has more than 100 athletes on the Salem boys track & field team. He’s having a blast with it, especially with the freshmen athletes who are just starting out learning about track.
"Some of them may not be the most talented, natural athletes but they want to be part of the team,” he said. “They might not be able to make another team, but they want to be involved in athletics and be on a team. It’s been very intellectually challenging and inspiring to come up with new things for ninth graders, to make it fun and not let them get discouraged.
"They put a smile on my face just about every day. I hope it’s going to be keep me a young 72 and a young 73 and as long as I keep doing this.”
Goodridge also is building relationships with other area coaches. He’s not been afraid to seek out advice.
It’s been a long time since I designed workouts for the young ones,” he said. “It’s fun to sort it out, to my own approach to training, with that age group. All athletes respond differently to training and intensity and what you give them. The age of the athlete is a factor in that. It’s been a long time since I had experience working with freshmen. That’s been fun.”
Doug Donnelly has served as a sports and news reporter and city editor over 25 years, writing for the Daily Chief-Union in Upper Sandusky, Ohio from 1992-1995, the Monroe Evening News from 1995-2012 and the Adrian Daily Telegram since 2013. He's also written a book on high school basketball in Monroe County and compiles record books for various schools in southeast Michigan. E-mail him at [email protected] with story ideas for Jackson, Washtenaw, Hillsdale, Lenawee and Monroe counties.
PHOTOS: (Top) John Goodridge, center, retired in the fall from coaching the men’s track & field team at Eastern Michigan University. (Middle) Goodridge also served as coach of the men’s cross country team. (Photos courtesy of the EMU athletic department.)