A Backhanded Compliment
April 17, 2012
A year ago this month I listened to the attorney for another statewide high school athletic association pose this question: “Why is it that people quite readily accept inflexible age limitations over a broad spectrum of American life, including sports, but presuppose it is wrong for school sports?”
This attorney was in the middle of a controversy that more recently has visited the MHSAA: an overage student seeking relief from a universally applied maximum age rule. The speaker was perplexed and frustrated by the double standard.
Part of the reason for the double standard rests in the reality that people value the school sports experience so much more than other parts of life, including other sports experiences. Because they want the opportunity to play, they resort to litigation in an attempt to create the right to play.
Another part of the reason school sports is challenged on an issue on which other programs get a free pass is that school sports has a centralized authority, close to home. State high school associations are readily accessible targets, easier both to find and to fight with than most other entities with age restrictions.
And, of course, part of the reason for the double standard is the proximity of interscholastic athletics to academics – the former extracurricular, the latter curricular – the former a privilege for most teenagers, the latter a right of all citizens to age 26.
The reasons school sports are attacked on this issue while other entities are not are reasons really complimentary to school sports: the program is popular, accessible and connected to education. None of these features of school sports, or its age limitation, should change.
Storm Surge
September 29, 2017
We have all been glued to our video devices for gruesome scenes from hurricane-ravaged portions of this hemisphere. In terms of scope and duration, the devastation is unlike anything any of us can remember so close to home; and it’s hard to say this ... including Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Within a few weeks of destruction in Louisiana and Mississippi in 2005, the Michigan High School Athletic Association had established procedures for expediting the consideration of athletic eligibility of students who had evacuated uninhabitable areas and arrived in our communities without the usual records required to establish athletic eligibility in MHSAA member schools.
On Sept. 6 of this year, the MHSAA Executive Committee revisited the 2005 experience and set a course for making eligibility decisions for evacuees from Texas, Florida and other locations, should they arrive in Michigan communities. Key elements for making favorable eligibility decisions are:
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The student’s previous school has ceased to operate.
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The student’s previous residence is uninhabitable. Dwellings are presumed to have been uninhabitable for at least a brief time in specific zip codes to be designated.
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The student has been ordered to evacuate from his/her previous community.
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The student has relocated to Michigan in a permanent type of housing (not hotel) with his/her parents or only living parent and has enrolled at the public school serving that residence, the closest public school academy to the residence, or the closest nonpublic school to the new residence, pursuant to Interpretation 62.
Should Michigan schools receive a surge of storm victims this fall, we are prepared to act quickly on athletic eligibility.