Cooperative Concerns
July 12, 2016
When an organization receives positive media attention for a policy change, it’s probably best to accept the praise and get back to work. But that could be too easy and miss some teachable moments.
This summer, the Michigan High School Athletic Association has been the recipient of unqualified praise for allowing two or more high schools of any size to jointly sponsor sports teams at the subvarsity level, and for relaxing enrollment limits so that two or more high schools of the same school district could jointly sponsor varsity teams in all sports except basketball and football.
Media seemed to think that this was something revolutionary in Michigan. In fact, the concept of what we call “cooperative programs” in Michigan was borrowed from other Midwest states and began in Michigan during the 1988-89 school year when seven cooperative programs were first approved. Those seven co-ops involved 13 of the MHSAA’s smallest high schools.
Over the next almost three decades, policies have been revised over and over to assist students in schools of larger enrollments, sports of low participation and schools with special circumstances. All of this is admirable; but to be frank, not all results are positive.
The idea of cooperative programs is to increase opportunity. That has often occurred. But increasingly, schools are entering into co-ops not to create new opportunities for participation where they did not exist, but to save opportunities for participation where existing participation is declining – or worse, to combine two viable teams into one to save money.
This trend, and the slight softening of the fundamental principle of educational athletics – that each student competes for his or her own school’s teams – should soften the praise for our most recent expansion of cooperative programs in Michigan.
Entering 2016-17, the MHSAA has nearly 300 high school cooperative programs for nearly 500 sports teams, and nearly 100 junior high/middle school cooperative programs for approximately 340 sports teams. A growing number are not being created with the lofty goals of 1988-89. Instead of the word “create,” we more often see the word “survive” in the cooperative team applications.
Tracking Transfers
August 16, 2016
The number of requests to waive rules by Michigan High School Athletic Association school administrators to the MHSAA Executive Committee during the 2015-16 school year dropped to the lowest total since the 2006-07 school year, and the percentage of approved requests exceeded 80 percent for the first time in decades.
Of 453 requests for waiver, 381 (84%) were approved during the Executive Committee’s 12 meetings from August 2015 through June 2016.
As always, requests to waive the transfer rule dominated. There were 291 requests, of which 224 were approved (77%). That’s the first time there were fewer than 300 transfer waiver requests since the 2006-07 school year.
Across the U.S., transfers persist as the most popular and prickly eligibility issue of school sports, especially in states with open enrollment/school of choice. While certainly a greater plague in more populated areas where several schools are often in close proximity, this problem knows no economic boundaries – students bounce from home to home in disadvantaged communities and wealthier parents leverage their advantages to buy homes where they desire their children to be schooled.
While still a very small percentage of all transfer students, high profile athletic-related transfers get headlines and, too often, their new teams grab trophies that elude schools which play by both the letter and the spirit of transfer rules.
Mishandling transfers is still the No. 1 cause of forfeitures in Michigan high school sports. Increasing mobility and the messiness of marital relations keep students on the move, and keep athletic administrators on their toes. Vetting all new students, and getting all information before the new student gets in a game, is a high priority of the full-time professional athletic administrator, and it’s not something many part-time ADs can do.