Tomlin Sells Opportunity at Alma Mater
July 11, 2013
By Rob Kaminski
MHSAA benchmarks editor
Edward Tomlin had it all. Or, at least, everything he wanted when he left Central State University in Wilberforce, Ohio, to launch himself into the real world.
“I was in sales. My big thing in college was that I wanted a company car, and a laptop, and I wanted to travel. That was it,” Tomlin recalled on a cold February morning this winter. “Well, 25 pounds later, I realized, ‘You know what? This is not all it’s cracked up to be.’ It was a lot of fun for a guy coming right out of college, but it really wasn’t meaningful.”
The erstwhile traveler is now firmly entrenched in a first-floor office at Detroit’s Cass Technical High School, selling the most precious of all commodities: opportunity to student-athletes.
He recalls going into work one day during his prior life and thinking there must be something else to do.
A phone call to his mother was all it took.
“She said, ‘Well then, quit.’ And, I quit, that day,” Tomlin said. “It’s funny because my mom told me before I left college I should get certified to teach, and I said, ‘Nah, I’m going into sales.’”
Well, mother knows best. In Tomlin’s case, both his mother, Jacqueline, and his father, Kern, were lifetime educators.
And, now, so is he.
After beginning as a substitute teacher within a week after retiring his sales briefcase, he landed his first teaching gig at Detroit Crockett High School.
A solid golfer, Tomlin was never at a loss to find people seeking to fill out a foursome during his sales travels. So, he put that talent to use as the Crockett golf coach during that first year.
“I started to coach golf in the fall of 1994 and found that I enjoyed it,” Tomlin said. “Plus I got to hit my golf ball a little bit and show some kids that they could play.”
A year later, his coaching path took a duck-hook if ever there was one when he arrived at his alma mater, Cass Tech. It was then that one of his dad’s friends told Tomlin the Technicians needed help with girls volleyball.
“About all I knew was what I’d seen in the Olympics. So over the next three or four years I learned to coach volleyball, and we went from being a good program to a bad program,” Tomlin laughed, while adding that Cass Tech had just won an MHSAA Regional and had some solid individual talent when he stepped in.
“But, through MIVCA (the Michigan Interscholastic Volleyball Coaches Association), and some additional training and sports performance videos, I’ve turned into a better coach,” he added.
Such is Tomlin’s approach to administration. As he was trying to find his way during the early years, and continues to do to the present, he leaned on the network of people and resources available.
Tomlin had worked closely with long-time Cass Tech athletic director Robert Shannon, and early in his educational career was introduced to the Michigan Interscholastic Administrators Association by Doris Rogers, then AD at Crockett.
“I started going to MIAAA and taking leadership courses and training,” said Tomlin, now in his second year as Cass Tech’s AD. “It really opened up a side of interscholastic athletics that I had not been exposed to. Going to those conferences has really helped me to develop my philosophies and helped establish what we try to do here at Cass.”
There is so much more that he’d like to do, but like all ADs in the Detroit Public School League, there are time limitations.
“One of the things holding us back in the Detroit Public Schools is that our position has turned into a stipend position,” Tomlin said. “I’ve got five Algebra I classes, so I’m in class until 2 (p.m.) every day. The things that I really want to do with this program in terms of moving it forward by finding more sponsorships for new teams and facilities suffer a bit due to time.”
As such, much of the responsibilities placed on athletic directors at other schools statewide fall to the coaches in the PSL. Cass Tech has won two straight MHSAA Division 1 football titles, something other coaches at Cass aspire to do. But, warns Tomlin, there’s a price to pay.
“Everyone likes the end result of a state championship, but the support and the effort it takes to get there is totally on the coaches here. They deserve all the credit,” Tomlin said. “The coaches have huge tasks because, hey, your AD has five classes so you have to be really passionate about what you’re doing; if you’re not, this isn’t the job for you.”
Hiring the right coaches is paramount today, as expectations of parents and students seem to be at odds with reality.
“Parents’ and students’ expectations have changed so much. Everyone wants that scholarship, or this level of athlete, but are they willing to put in the work?” Tomlin said.
Tomlin knows a bit about parental expectations, and hopes to instill all he’s learned in daughter Montana (16) and son Chase (11) as they continue to enjoy athletic participation.
When it’s time, Tomlin might even try to sell them on a career in education, as his mother did to him years ago.
PHOTO: Detroit Cass Tech athletic director Edward Tomlin stands in his school's gymnasium. He returned to his alma mater as volleyball coach in 1995.
This is the fourth 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.