Cooperative Spirit
May 13, 2016
The 2016-17 school year will be the 29th since “cooperative programs” were first approved for MHSAA member high schools; and in that first year, it was but a modest step: two or more MHSAA member high schools whose combined enrollment did not exceed the maximum for a Class D school (then 297) could jointly sponsor a team. The intent, of course, was to help our very smallest member schools generate enough participants to have a viable program in one or more sports that was of interest to some of their students.
Over the years, the cooperative program concept has expanded to member schools of larger enrollment and to member junior high/middle schools. As of April 7, 2016, there were 260 cooperative programs at the high school level involving 450 teams, as well as 88 cooperative programs at the junior high/middle school level for 331 teams.
During the 2016-17 school year, there will be two new opportunities for MHSAA member schools to consider with respect to cooperative programs.
First, cooperative programs will be an explicitly stated option at the subvarsity level in any sport.
Second, maximum enrollments have been eliminated to help public multi-high-school districts start and complete competitive seasons in communities that have struggled to sustain programs in baseball, bowling, girls competitive cheer, cross country, golf, soccer, girls softball, tennis and wrestling. This is a three-year experiment.
It is declining enrollment more than a desire to save money that the MHSAA Executive Committee looks for when approving cooperative programs. Combining enrollments to create new or preserve existing programs is the intent; co-oping to reduce expenditures is not.
The Importance of Play
September 9, 2016
In the usual post-Olympic sports news coverage there was the predictable commentary about over-commercialization of the Olympic movement and corruption of the Olympic ideal. Is this really what the Greeks intended?
Of course not.
But really, what do we do today that has any resemblance to what we intended a century ago when the “modern” Olympic movement was resurrected, much less to what was intended 27 centuries earlier when the ancient Olympics began?
But at least one thing with ancient Greek roots remains unchanged. It is this.
Plato, student of Socrates, mentor of Aristotle and founder of the “academy” in Athens during the heyday of the ancient OIympics, wrote that more can be learned about a person in an hour of play than a year of conversation.
That has not changed.
And that is one very important of very many reasons why play of a competitive nature – not mere recreation – matters, just as much today as 28 centuries ago. In fact, in this “modern” world of nonstop electronic conversation, the hour of physical engagement between people may be our most revealing communication.