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 the Transfer Rule
September 19, 2017
We are not the first generation of school leaders to be concerned about athletic transfers in secondary school sports.
Lewis L. Forsythe, in his 1950 book Athletics in Michigan High Schools, described his era and earlier this way: “... there were enough who transferred for advantage, as they thought, in athletic opportunities to give wide currency to the term ‘tramp athletes.’ These were usually students who became ineligible in schools in which they had first enrolled, or became otherwise disaffected in their home situation and went elsewhere to continue school. It was possible, for example, for a boy to play football at Ann Arbor one season, drop out of school until the next March first, and then enter Jackson High school. Here he could make himself eligible for baseball and track by merely ‘passing’ in ten hours (later twelve hours) of work from time to time according to the reporting methods of the school, and then leave without taking final examinations. The next semester he might enroll in Detroit High School, and, by satisfying eligibility requirements for the current semester, play football in that school. With no age limit and no required check-up on eligibility in another school, this could go on for at least five years.”
Mr. Forsythe, writing in 1950, cited concerns as early as 1901, which led the state athletic committee to adopt the first transfer rule for school sports in Michigan. It required a student going from one secondary school to another to present a certificate from administrators of the school left that the student was eligible under the athletic rules of the time. The issue of the time was that students who were performing poorly in the classroom of one school would attempt to escape ineligibility due to academic deficiencies by transferring to another school
Two years later, a rule was adopted to address undue influence (recruiting) that required all schools to sever all relationships with a school that attempts to influence any athlete to change schools.
A year later (1904), this proposal was debated: “A student who has played on a football team, or on a baseball team, or who has taken part in any track events, going from one school to another, shall be ineligible to enter any secondary athletic contest for one year, unless the parents of such student move from one school district to another ...”
It took 20 years for a rule change to actually be made in this direction: “No student who has been enrolled as a high school student in any high school shall be permitted to participate in any interscholastic contest as a member of any other high school until he has been enrolled in such school for one full semester, unless the parents of such student actually change their residence to the second school district. In the latter case, the student will be as eligible as he was in the school from which he withdrew.”
There, in the first code of rules promulgated by the Michigan High School Athletic Association in 1924, is the core of our 2017 rule ... ineligible for one semester, with the exception for an actual change of residence.
Today we debate that the period of ineligibility is too short and the residency exception is too lenient.
As for the period of ineligibility, across the U.S., one year is more common than one semester. As for the residency exception, it exists everywhere. In fact, in some places the “transfer” rule is referred to as the “residency” rule.