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Community Development

April 1, 2015

When those who lead, manage and deliver school sports do their jobs well, the whole child – body, mind and spirit – is educated. Students learn to lead, and they learn to follow. They learn to become good team captains and good teammates.
When the job is done well, we place good sports on the path to becoming great citizens. We elevate both school spirit and GPAs. We lower dropout rates and discipline problems.
When the job is done well, school sports is an essential component of school improvement, as well as of the community building and place making strategies that every progressive city and town in Michigan is thinking about.
Successful schools are the ones in the center of community life; and when the job is well done, school sports programs are central to the life of those schools.
Building a school program without sports is like constructing the physical school building without the mortar that holds things together. Building a community without comprehensive schools is just as foolish.

Why There Are Rules

June 25, 2013

In 1907 William James put in writing a series of lectures he had given in Boston the year before titled “Pragmatism:  A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking.”  Included in the third lecture is this gem:

 “… the aim of a football-team is not merely to get the ball to a certain goal (if that were so, they would simply get up on some dark night and place it there), but to get it there by a fixed machinery of conditions – the game’s rules and the opposing players;”

This, to James, was a given, cited to help him make a more profound point.

But the point is profound enough for us. Without rules, and opponents playing by the same rules, there is no validity in moving the ball to the goal. Without rules, there is no value in sinking the putt, making the basket, clearing the bar, crossing the finish line. Without a regulatory scheme adhered to by all competitors, victory is hollow.

(Note: These words begin the Foreword to “The History, Rationale and Application of the Essential Regulations of High School Athletics in Michigan.” Click here for the full document.