BOTF x 2
April 5, 2013
“Battle of the Fans,” an idea of the MHSAA Student Advisory Council, is one of the best ideas to ever flow from the MHSAA. It has provided a new way of promoting one of the oldest, and most important, defining features of school sports. That’s sportsmanship.
Where schools have participated in BOTF, attending school sports events is becoming cool again. Crowds are larger and more positive. Students and administrators are having positive discussions about sportsmanship. Media are reporting on the positive changes they are seeing.
Take a look on MHSAA.com at the videos submitted by 27 schools this year to enter the second BOTF competition. Look at the videos prepared for the five finalists after the MHSAA’s onsite visit.
Spectator stands are filled with students – happy, engaged, energetic, cheering students. Exactly what we want in school sports; exactly what is missing from other youth sports programs.
It’s our advantage – energized students, cheerleaders, pep bands, marching bands and mascots. It’s what we have and what the AAU doesn’t have; what US Soccer Development Academies don’t have; what club volleyball lacks and what travel ice hockey is missing.
Using YouTube and Facebook, BOTF is a new way to present and an energetic way to promote school sports that is local, student-centered, high spirited and highly sportsmanlike.
Congratulations to our two winners so far – Frankenmuth in 2012 and Buchanan in 2013.
Girls, Boys and Concussions
September 13, 2016
On Monday the Michigan High School Athletic Association announced the major findings from the first year that member high schools were required to report all suspected concussions in the practices and competitions conducted in the 28 sports served by the MHSAA.
It surprises no one that 11-player and 8-player football ranked first and third, with 49 and 34 head injuries per thousand participants, respectively.
And while I’m told it’s not surprising to the experts that girls report more head injuries than boys, it is stunning to me how very many more head injuries are reported for girls than boys.
In sports with identical playing rules, girls reported head injuries with approximately twice the frequency that boys did.
In soccer, girls reported 30 head injuries per 1,000 participants, compared to 18 per 1,000 for boys.
In basketball, girls reported 29 head injuries per 1,000 participants, compared to only 11 per 1,000 for boys.
Girls reported concussions at the rate of 11 per 1,000 participants in softball, while boys reported just 4 per 1,000 in baseball.
Only a small percentage of either girls or boys were cleared by licensed medical personnel to return to activity in less than six days, and more than half were withheld between six and 15 days in soccer and basketball. The data suggests that clearance for girls to be returned to activity was slightly more gradual than it was for boys.
Researchers and reporters may find dozens of other observations and curiosities from the summary of 4,452 confirmed head injury reports submitted by the MHSAA’s 755 member high schools for MHSAA-supported sports in 2015-16; but what has the MHSAA’s attention is this giant gender difference.
Is this gender difference accurate, and if so, what are the physiological factors involved that make it so?
Is there a tendency for over-reporting by females, or under-reporting by males, and if so, what are the social and/or psychological factors that may cause this?
Regardless, what does this mean for how coaches work with boys and girls; and what does that mean for how we prepare coaches through the MHSAA Coaches Advancement Program?
The MHSAA will take to an even deeper level its nearly 30-year partnership with the Institute for the Study of Youth Sports at Michigan State University to explore the issues related to coaches education that have emerged as a result of the first year of mandated concussion reporting for Michigan high schools.
The 2015-16 school year was only a start; it identified some initial themes. The more important value will be realized after the 2016-17 school year, and subsequent school years, when year-over-year comparisons will be made and trends will become apparent that will demand action to further promote the welfare of participants in school-sponsored sports.