Attitude Adjustment
January 12, 2016
As an everyday, every hour observer of what’s happening to school sports and within school sports, I can get into a negative rut.
But if I step back, and then step out to a local school event – especially at the subvarsity level – my attitude changes. This is where I get a “fix.” This is where I discover the antidote for creeping cynicism.
Here I see coaches teaching, more than screaming. Here is where I watch an official not only make a call but explain it to the participant. Here is where I see athletes smile. And I do too.
Many years ago my son told me how much more he liked coaching at the middle school level than at the high school level. At the younger level, appreciative parents saw him as the one tapping into new talents. At the higher level, overbearing parents said he was missing or misusing their child’s talent.
The subvarsity level – the arena of discovery and development – is underappreciated. In fact, it is often where the best of what we call “educational athletics” occurs.
The Meaning of Success
December 8, 2015
All of the MHSAA’s fall season tournaments have ended. A small sliver of our hundreds of member school teams are clutching championship trophies.
Thankfully, those few trophies do not define success.
Some teams won their first ever MHSAA Regional title this fall, and a few more won their first MHSAA District championship ... and those go down in their local lore as the most successful teams in those schools’ histories. Deservedly so.
But even those situations do not define success adequately.
Some teams had their first winning record in many years. Some teams didn’t accomplish that goal but won twice as many games as the year before; and they rightfully claimed their seasons a success.
Some teams lost almost every game but kept pulling together without back-biting or complaining. And that too is success.
I once told a team of T-ballers I was coaching that they had a perfect record: six wins and six losses. Six times they had to deal with victories; six times they had to deal with losses. That’s also a good definition of success.
And finally ... singer/songwriter Sam Baker has written this lyric about his aspirations to play professional ice hockey: “I failed well; and that made all the difference.”