Up-Close Learning
November 18, 2014
Nearly 100 coaches gathered at the MHSAA office on Saturday, Nov. 1, for more than six hours of learning in Level 1 of the MHSAA Coaches Advancement Program. What occurred that day demonstrates the MHSAA’s commitment to a particular teaching and learning model we have chosen for its effectiveness, not its ease.
It would have been much simpler to put the 100 coaches in a single room and rotate three lecturers in front of them, and still simpler if everyone participated online in the isolation of their homes. But CAP is not delivered in either of those ways.
Rather, on Nov. 1, the nearly 100 coaches were placed in three separate rooms, so the presenters could see everyone’s eyes and read everyone’s faces and address everyone’s questions and concerns.
And, within those smaller rooms, the coaches sat in pods with four or five other coaches for more practical and often deeper discussion than the larger group setting allows.
Meanwhile, in an even more intimate fourth room, another 20 coaches completed the sixth and final level of the Coaches Advancement Program.
In an online world there is still a place for face-to-face teaching and learning. This is especially true in coaching where interpersonal relationships have more to do with determining success and failure than Xs and Os.
Upon Further Review
November 6, 2015
Michigan was among the first dozen statewide high school associations in the U.S. to reduce the amount of contact during football practices. Since Michigan acted prior to the 2014 football season, the National Federation of State High School Associations has adopted recommendations, and all remaining state high school associations have adopted new restrictions.
The task force that acted early in Michigan to make the proposals that were supported by this state’s football coaches association and the MHSAA Representative Council wanted policies that could be clearly understood and easily enforced. The task force concluded that counting minutes of contact during a practice or a week was not the best approach.
Who would track the minutes for each and every player? Does the minute of contact count for a player who is only observing and not actually participating in the contact drill or scrimmage?
In limiting Michigan teams and players to one collision practice a day prior to the first game and two collision practices per week the rest of the season, the task force recommendation avoided the need to have coaches and administrators track and record the minutes of each and every player on each and every team each and every day and to determine what types of activities and what degree of involvement counted against 30- or 60- or 90-minute maximums.
It is anticipated that the MHSAA Football Committee will review in early 2016 what other states have done since the MHSAA acted in early 2014, but it is not assumed that changes are needed to existing practice policies. Further review may confirm earlier judgments about policies that are both protective of players and practical for coaches and administrators.