Olympic Run Leads to Northern Michigan
July 8, 2013
By Rob Kaminski
MHSAA benchmarks editor
To a generation of sports fans, Lake Placid, NY, will always conjure images of the “Miracle on Ice” orchestrated by the 1980 US Olympic Hockey Team and the voice of Al Michaels counting down the seconds and asking, “Do you believe in miracles?”
Maureen Whidden grew up a sports fan in a sports household. She, too, has a memory of Lake Placid, but it’s unlike those of most other people in the world, let alone this country.
“Right from college I went to Lake Placid, NY, and was an intern for the Olympic Training Center, working operations and events,” she said. “I got to go down the bobsled run, which was awesome. We started from about halfway up and I clocked about 45 miles per hour. It was just cool.”
Now beginning her fourth year as athletic director at Houghton Lake High School, Whidden maintains a pace which on most days during the school year must feel like twice her speed down the icy track in Lake Placid.
A self-proclaimed gym rat, she wouldn’t have it any other way. Her father, Rick Radulski, was the varsity boys basketball coach at Utica High School. When she was not in the gym, she was, “watching game film with the guys. That’s how I grew up.”
After earning a master’s degree in sport administration from Central Michigan University, it was off to Lake Placid, and on the fast track – literally – to launching her career.
The unexpected bobsled run opened Whidden’s eyes in more ways than the obvious thrill of the moment.
“It was my introduction to non-traditional sports such as luge, skeleton; just awesome sports. Those athletes are so strong. Real power and strength athletes,” Whidden said.
Following her internship, Whidden was hired by USA Taekwondo in Colorado Springs, where she worked for a year and a half while in the process being exposed to yet another sport.
Her path then led to operations with the US Olympic Committee, working at the headquarters for three years. Whidden was involved with National Governing Bodies, coordinating events and processing athletes’ stays at the headquarters from start to finish.
Though vastly different than the sports she followed growing up, she could easily see a common thread in the people who participated.
“All athletes have the same goals and the same values; the same drive,” Whidden said. “Not all of them get the same publicity. Taekwondo, for instance, didn’t get the publicity that basketball or soccer got.”
It was that type of experience that helped in her transition to heading up a high school program of 15 sports, a couple of which were in their infancy for the 2012-13 school year. Whidden called upon her USOC experience as she welcomed bowling and cross country to Houghton Lake.
“Bringing new students into the athletic world, or exposing others to a new sport, really opened my eyes,” Whidden said. “On the bowling team we have 12 kids who may have never played another sport in their lives, and they just went to the Regionals. It’s not just mainstream sports – football, basketball, baseball – that can succeed .”
The two additional sports were a welcome addition to Whidden’s workload, at a school where 23 percent of the student body participates in at least one sport, and only 11.5 percent suit up in two different uniforms.
She wishes the numbers were higher, but several factors are at play for the Class B school of 468 students in one of Michigan’s prime resort towns – with the economy and funding posing the highest hurdles.
“We’re one of the poorest counties in the state of Michigan, based on average income,” Whidden said. “Our student count has dropped in recent years. People come here during peak seasons and support our businesses, and that’s great, but people aren’t moving here.”
Some, in fact, are moving away, which has left Whidden looking for football and boys basketball coaches in each of her three years.
Yet, if there’s one thing clear when meeting Whidden, the challenge is not too daunting. It is worth noting that the recent additions of bowling and cross country came to fruition through old school dedication and heart; the programs are self-funded, and the coaches are not paid.
Whidden knows all about paying dues. This is just her first year as a fulltime staffer at the high school, after starting as a half-time employee and then moving to three-quarters-time.
“Our community support has been the most amazing aspect of this job,” Whidden said. “We don’t have the budget to pay our event workers: ticket takers, announcers, scorebook ... anybody. But, I’m never scrambling to find workers. That’s amazing to me.”
Whidden often brings extra “volunteers” along – twin 5-year-olds, Troy and Blake – to afford them the same opportunities she had as a child and start them down the right track.
PHOTO: Houghton Lake athletic director Maureen Whidden stands in front of the press box at her school's football stadium. This fall, she'll begin her fourth year guiding the athletic programs.
This is the third installment of a series, "Career Paths," focusing on the unsung contributions of athletic directors. See below for earlier installments.
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.