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.
Grabbing Game-Changers
October 6, 2017
The Michigan High School Athletic Association has not been standing still while the athletic transfer situation has devolved into an eyesore for educational athletics.
Twenty years ago (1997), the association adopted a rule that extended from one semester to 180 scheduled school days the period of ineligibility in all sports for a student whose primary reason for changing schools is alleged and confirmed to be athletics.
In 2014, dissatisfied with the infrequency of that rule’s use and the difficulties it created between schools, the association adopted the “links” rule – the athletic-related transfer rule. This extended ineligibility from one semester to 180 scheduled school days in a particular sport when a non-school experience in that sport links the student to the school team to which he or she is transferring.
The newer rule has been easier to use. It doesn’t require that an allegation be made by the administration of the school from which the student is transferring. It has been less likely to pit one school against another, but more likely to pit parents against the MHSAA.
The new rule has been best used as a deterrent before a student transfers ... a warning. But the rule is of no use if one of the 15 exceptions that provides for immediate eligibility applies – for example, if there was a full and complete change of residence.
That is a gap that gnaws at those who want to nab the “game changers” – those transfers who add to the status of one team while dashing the dreams of another.