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Committee Work

January 6, 2015

The winter months are the busiest for MHSAA committees, especially for those that must review or prepare recommendations for changes for the following school year.
Each year, up to 20 MHSAA committees consider proposals for Representative Council action relative to MHSAA tournament policies or procedures or Handbook regulations or interpretations.
During school year 2014-15, wherever applicable, the committees are being asked to address health and safety issues as well as policies and procedures relative to subvarsity and junior high/middle school students; and as a result of positive 2014 Update Meeting Opinion Poll responses, each sport committee is being asked to respond during calendar year 2015 and beyond to several concepts for MHSAA tournament seeding.
MHSAA committees are dominated by coaches, but they are not a rubber stamp for proposals that proceed from that sport’s high school coaches association. The difference of opinion often results from the committee seeing things differently than a coaches association leadership that the committee believes is not representative of schools of diverse size, location and demographics.
It is appropriate for committees to ask: Who was not in the room when this recommendation was drafted? Who will not be served well by this change?
When committees go through this process, they tend to reduce the quantity but improve the quality of recommendations to the Representative Council, which increases the percentage of recommendations the Council adopts.

No. 1 Worries

December 27, 2017

Editor's Note: This blog originally was posted Sept. 21, 2012, and the theme rings true today.

Fueled by the “No. 1” syndrome, people often worry about and value the wrong things when it comes to interscholastic athletics.

For example, they worry about the eligibility of athletes more than the education of students.  They worry about athletic scholarships to college more than genuine scholarship in high school.  Faced with financial shortfalls, they use middle school athletics as the whipping boy because the No. 1 syndrome causes people to value varsity programs more than junior varsity, and high school programs more than middle school.

It is possible in the subvarsity programs of our high schools (far more than in varsity programs where crowds and media bring pressure to win) and it should be and usually is pervasive in our middle school programs, that participation is more important than specialization, trying more important than winning, teamwork more important than individual honors, and teaching more important than titles and trophies.

At the middle school level, coaches have an opportunity to look down the bench for substitutes without first looking up at the scoreboard.  The scorebook should be kept to see how many students played in the game, not how many points any one player scored.

Here is where education prevails over entertainment in interscholastic athletics.  Here is where philosophy of athletics is more in tune with the mission of the school.  Here is where the taxpayer’s dollar is spent best.

To the degree we introduce large tournaments and trophies into middle level programs, we damage the purity of educational athletics and the purpose of middle school programs.  To the degree we cut middle level programs in the face of budget crises, we succumb to the No. 1 syndrome.

We must expose the No. 1 syndrome for the sickness it is:  a cancerous growth that must be cut out of educational athletics before it leads to cutting out what is arguably the most educational parts of interscholastic athletics:  middle school programs.