Logo

Championship Comments

April 23, 2013

Tom Lang wrote for the Lansing State Journal on April 5, 2013, about our most recent four-time MHSAA wrestling champion who, in keeping with our policy of not naming students in blogs, is not named here.

What really makes me want to name the Fowlerville senior heavyweight is that, in Lang’s article, the four-time champ freely names his practice partners over the years and credits them for his success.

With maturity and humility uncharacteristic of athletes twice his age, our newest of 17 four-time champs said:  “I definitely had some great practice partners who were beating me up;” and he named five of them who he said “were all great practice partners for me.  They were quicker so I had to make sure I stayed in good position and worked a lot on speed and more fluid technique.”

This senior, who pinned every opponent he faced this past season continued:  “A lot of people might have been four-time state champs but they get one injury and that ruins it.  Four years can be looked at as a very short time, but that’s a long time with wrestling and how you can face injury.  There seems to be a lot of knee torqueing and shoulder injuries, the joints – and it really wears at you going four years in high school.  It can be brutal on the body.  So just staying healthy four years so you get a chance, is just the start.”

Giving credit to good partners and good luck.  I’m thinking this young man already knows much more about life than wrestling.

Fracking in School Sports

May 1, 2015

First there were rumors, then there were reports, and now there are beginning to be results from geological surveys warning that the process of fracking in oil and gas exploration and deep ground extraction is increasing the frequency of earthquakes in several parts of the United States.
I want to say, “Duh! How could it not?” Why would it surprise any rational human being that the delicate blue marble we inhabit would not get off kilter when we bore deep into the surface with drills and explosive charges and then pump water at high pressure into the tunnels we create and the crevices we exploit? When I put that picture in my mind, I shudder.
Often I picture the world of school sports like this marble we inhabit. Sometimes I see exploiters drilling deep into our core, dropping explosives, applying pressure, and extracting what they believe are valuable resources while laying waste to everything else, including very much that is very precious to very many other people – in fact, to most athletes, coaches, administrators, officials, parents and spectators.
We should pay attention to the times when we feel our foundation shaking, even just a little. We should make it difficult for the exploiters to extract our elite, especially when they disregard and lay waste to everything else that holds our world – educational athletics – together.