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.
Misspent Money
January 12, 2018
Editor's Note: This blog originally was posted July 15, 2014, and the message is worth another read.
It is not news to us, but it makes more waves when others report it.
William Hageman of the Chicago Tribune reported last month on a study from Utah State University’s Families in Sport Lab that found “the more money parents spend on youth sports, the more likely their kids are to lose interest.”
A Utah State researcher explains the connection: “The more money folks are investing, the higher pressure kids are perceiving. More pressure means less enjoyment. As kids enjoy sports less, their motivation goes down.”
Hageman exposes the folly of parents’ justification for their financial outlay – increasing their child’s chances for a college scholarship. Hageman says “a look at the numbers shows they (parents) may be deluding themselves.”
He cites NCAA statistics that only two percent of high school athletes receive athletic scholarships; and we have to add that many of those are not “full-rides.” The average scholarship covers less than half the cost of an in-state college education for one academic year.