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The Best Is Yet To Come

June 17, 2014

My last posting was built on six words from the novel, No Small Mischief, a fictional memoir of life in Nova Scotia’s northernmost region. Today’s posting is launched from an 11-word passage from the same work: “Living in the past is not living up to our potential.”
How horrible it is to peak in high school. 
To remember high school as the best days of life is not such a problem, unless it is true. If, in fact, we were at our best during our high school years, then we have failed to fully develop as human beings.
I heard an athletic director close a senior student-athlete awards program recently by saying, wisely, “I hope you will visit us, but not too long or too often. You need to get on with your lives.”
The high school experience – including competitive athletics – is not the end, not the fulfillment of anything. It is, at its best, the launching pad for life.
That it can be the best days of one’s youth should not make school sports the best years of one’s life.

Representative Voices

April 4, 2017

The Michigan High School Athletic Association is governed by a Representative Council of 18 members and a designee of the State Superintendent of Public Instruction. It is important that this representative body actually be representative of the group it serves.

Of the 18 regular members of the Representative Council,

  • 16 have served as high school athletic directors, with an average tenure of 16.5 years. Eight have also served as junior high/middle school athletic directors, with an average tenure of 11.7 years.

  • 11 have served as high school assistant principals, averaging 6.2 years.

  • 5 have served as high school principals, averaging 6.4 years.

  • 3 have served as junior high/middle school principals, averaging 11.7 years.

  • 3 have served as superintendents or assistant superintendents, averaging 4.7 years.

  • 17 of the 18 have served as high school coaches, with an average tenure of 6.9 years. Seven have also served as middle school coaches, with an average tenure of 7.6 years.

  • 11 have been MHSAA registered officials. The average tenure has been 13.1 years, in an average of 2.1 sports.

To assure representation of both large and small schools in all parts of the state, the MHSAA Constitution requires that four Council members be elected from the Class A and B schools in four different geographic regions, and four be elected from Class C and D schools from those four geographic sections.

Five other Council members are elected by statewide votes, with two of those specifically designated persons serving junior high/middle schools, and one representing private and parochial schools. The public schools within the city of Detroit also have a representative.

To assure representation from females and minorities that might not occur through the election process, the MHSAA Constitution requires that the Council examine its makeup after each election and appoint up to a maximum of four persons at any one time to help address those deficiencies. The Council sometimes uses this appointment process to bring better representation to a part of the state that is underrepresented through the election process.

It goes almost without saying that nearly all of the Council members participated in competitive school sports and are the parents of participants in interscholastic athletics.

All in all, it’s a team with breadth and depth that touches most of the constituent bases of high school sports in Michigan.