A Bright Spot

April 22, 2014

One of the most foolish moves school districts have made as funding for their schools has been reduced, or redirected to various mandates, is to eliminate the position of full-time athletic administrator.
Some districts have combined the job with classroom instruction; other districts have hyphenated the position with other administrative responsibilities. Many districts have reduced clerical support and event management assistance. Hours have been cut and professional training has become an afterthought or luxury.
And still the districts send out their student-athletes to compete and collide in front of crowds of emotional onlookers. These districts are risking problems far more expensive than whatever was saved by this shortsighted approach to staffing.
One of the few bright spots in this bleak picture is the Michigan Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association, which has made initial and ongoing training for athletic directors one of its highest strategic objectives.
Last month, over three days at its annual mid-winter conference, the MIAAA provided 138 leadership training courses of the National Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association to 88 of our state’s athletic directors.
A team of 20 leadership training instructors, coordinated by Mike Garvey (Kalamazoo Hackett), delivers this national training program year-round to Michigan’s athletic directors. As a result of their efforts and the hunger of our athletic directors, Michigan leads the nation in the number of persons who have received the NIAAA’s Certified Athletic Administrator (CAA) designation.
The MIAAA also is establishing a mentoring program to help the CAAs take the next step, to Certified Master Athletic Administrator (CMAA). Michigan has 47 CMAAs.
Again this August, the MIAAA will conduct a Leadership Academy focusing on newer administrators. Meg Seng (Ann Arbor Greenhills) and Fred Smith (Buchanan) co-chair the academy, and the MHSAA co-sponsors it.
The MIAAA, and its commitment to deliver an athletic program worthy of the label “educational,” is one of our state’s greatest resources.

What We’ve Learned

July 12, 2017

Here’s some of what we’ve learned from the first two years of having all Michigan High School Athletic Association member high schools report suspected concussions and make follow-up reports for each.

First and foremost, concussions are of concern beyond football and boys. While football – the highest participation sport – has had the most concussions, the sports that follow are girls basketball (second) and girls soccer (third).

Which leads to the second lesson: Girls report two to three times as many concussions as boys in basketball and soccer, as well as in softball compared to baseball.

Which leads to the third lesson: Whether girls actually experience more concussions than boys or are more forthcoming than boys in reporting suspected concussions, coaches need to coach and communicate with females differently than males; and coach educators must prepare coaches to interact differently with boys and girls.

We’ve also learned that more than 80 percent of concussions caused the athlete to be withheld from activity for six days or longer; and again, there was a tendency to withhold girls longer than boys. In any event, the data suggests that people are taking concussions seriously and not rushing students back into practices or contests.

The data also reveals that more than two-thirds of reported concussions arise from competition, and less than one-third occur during the many longer hours of practice. This is a reversal of the data we were provided a decade ago based on smaller samplings from other states; and this suggests that coaches are finding ways to teach skills and conduct drills without requiring as much player-to-player contact as in the past.

That’s good news. But we’ve also learned from the first two years of data that there is still more to research, more to learn and more to do to make our good games even better.