Brilliant Blend
May 24, 2016
This month’s featured multi-sport student-athlete is well known to the Michigan High School Athletic Association staff, having served for two years on the MHSAA’s Student Advisory Council.
Greta Wilker is concluding her senior year at Belding High School. She’s Valedictorian, and will have earned 16 varsity letters by the time she wears her graduation cap and gown.
Greta is Sports Illustrated’s Athlete-of-the-Month for May, and she is brilliant in SI’s video tribute.
Her softball coach, whom she calls her “second mom,” has helped Greta learn how to move seamlessly from mistakes to successes. An art teacher has taught her that excellence, not perfection, is the healthier life goal.
But from all we have seen and heard, perfection is the word that comes to mind when reviewing the kind of experience school sports has provided Greta. Not every contest was a victory; not every season was a championship. It has been a brilliant blend of successes and failures and wins and losses that work together in school sports to help form healthy, happy adults.
Inactivity Epidemic
May 27, 2016
The Aspen Institute conducted its third “Project Play” Summit in Washington, D.C., on May 17. The sold-out event was both a stimulating and frustrating experience.
There are very many people doing marvelous things to increase the quantity and quality of sport participation among youth, especially focusing on ages 6 to 12 and underserved populations. However, intriguing local initiatives do not appear to be easily scalable, and the platitudes of national organizations do not appear to be reaching their local affiliates where youth coaches pressure parents and kids into year-around specialization and promise college scholarships.
We cannot expect that those whose business is winning medals (NGBs and USOC) or those whose business is making money (major college and professional sports) will be thought or action leaders who effectively increase participation rates and frequency or reduce obesity in adolescents. These goals will be good for PSAs and niche initiatives, but will never be a part of the DNA and daily mission of these entities.
We need to seek leadership of thought and action among adults who work with youth every day and who see sport not as an end in itself but as a means to help prepare the whole child for later life. And to be more precise, we need to seek leadership where the kids are and where facilities already exist. In our nation’s schools.
When recess and physical education programs with ample opportunities for free play and sports sampling are restored to elementary schools, and broad and deep programs of interscholastic athletic programs are adequately funded in junior high/middle schools and high schools, then and only then will we begin to reverse obesity in youth and their future burden on society as adults.
The epidemic isn’t obesity; it’s inactivity.
This nation must awaken to the reality that physical literacy is as important to our future as reading and writing have been in our past. Science, technology, engineering and math are important to our nation, of course, but possibly less essential to an individual’s health and happiness than physical literacy – developing the ability, confidence and desire to be physically active and, as an intentional consequence, much more likely to live healthier and longer.