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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.

Special Delivery

February 23, 2016

If there is one month of the year that demonstrates the difference in the MHSAA today compared to a generation ago, it is February.

  • This is the month when 775 people, including more than 700 students, gathered for the MHSAA Women in Sports Leadership Conference in Lansing. This year’s was the 22nd edition of the conference.

  • This is the month when the 120 finalists and 32 recipients of the 2016 MHSAA Scholar-Athlete Award are announced. This is the program’s 27th year, sponsored by Farm Bureau Insurance.

  • This is the month when MHSAA staff is on the road to visit finalists for “Battle of the Fans V,” and thousands of students vote for their favorite on social media, and the MHSAA Student Advisory Council finalizes the selection of this year’s top cheering section.

For most of its history, the MHSAA worked with school personnel who then interacted with students. Today, the MHSAA delivers much more than its postseason tournaments directly to student-athletes, including captains clinics and sportsmanship summits all year round.

While this work must never displace from our top priority the development and delivery of eligibility competition standards that are safe and sound for an educational environment, these direct interactions inform the rules making process in very positive ways.