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Correctable Error?

May 30, 2017

A decade has passed since the court-ordered change in several sports seasons for Michigan high schools. Ten years has brought resignation more than satisfaction; and yet there remains hope in some places that the new status quo is not permanent, at least for those sports seasons changes that were and are seen by many people as collateral damage in a fight over seasons for girls basketball and volleyball.

Actually, the lawsuit sought to place all girls seasons in the same seasons as boys, like college schedules. The federal court did not require simultaneous scheduling; but the court did bring the intercollegiate mindset to the case. It determined, regardless of other facts, that the intercollegiate season was the “advantageous” season for high school sports. And the principle upon which it approved the compliance plan for high school sports in Michigan was that if all the seasons were not simultaneous for boys and girls, then there should be rough equality in the number of boys and girls assigned to “disadvantageous” seasons.

So, for example, from the federal court’s perspective, fall is the advantageous season for soccer, winter for swimming & diving, and spring for tennis. As for golf, the court opined that, even though it’s not the season of the NCAA championships, maybe fall was the better season. The court began with tortured logic and ended with hypocrisy. 

As a result, in the Lower Peninsula, regardless of the preferences of the people involved, girls and boys had to switch seasons in two sports to even up the number of boys seasons and girls seasons in what the court had determined were disadvantageous. Schools thought the switch of golf and tennis for the genders was less injurious than switching soccer and swimming.

In the Upper Peninsula, because swimming and golf are combined for the genders in the winter and spring, respectively, the court’s option was to switch boys and girls seasons for either soccer or tennis. The schools chose soccer as the least disruptive change.

As people count the damaging effects and think about challenging the court-ordered placements a decade later, they must understand the court was looking for balance, for having the genders share the burden of participating in disadvantageous seasons. Moving Lower Peninsula boys golf to join girls in the fall and/or switching Lower Peninsula boys and girls tennis back to what was preferred and in place before judicial interference would recreate the imbalance the federal court conjured up and sought to remedy.

Those of us involved see many advantages to conducting fall golf for both genders in the Lower Peninsula and switching Lower Peninsula tennis seasons for boys and girls, no matter when colleges schedule those sports or how impractical the court’s logic and how inconsistently it was applied. Nevertheless, correcting the court’s errors could be both contentious and costly.

Leadership Impressions - #1 (The Double Win)

June 8, 2018

I have tried to treat the staff I’ve hired at the Michigan High School Athletic Association the way I wanted to be treated as a staff member before I came to the MHSAA as executive director. I wanted to be given a job and be allowed to run with it, without interference.

This dislike I have for micromanagement turned out to be a double win. Staff have enjoyed their freedom, and I’ve enjoyed mine. By not spending time overseeing and second-guessing staff, the executive director has had time to work on other matters.

Those other matters have sometimes turned out to be unique and defining features of the MHSAA. For example:

  • The only state high school association to publish an issued-focused magazine, benchmarks.

  • The only state high school association to conduct a face-to-face, multi-level coaches education program anytime, anywhere across the state, the Coaches Advancement Program.

  • The only state high school association to conduct the true sport of girls competitive cheer.

  • The only state high school association to mandate reporting of all suspected concussions in practices or competition for all sports by all member high schools.

  • The only state high school association to pay for concussion care “gap” insurance for all students in grades 6 through 12, at no cost to schools or families.

  • The only state high school association with a Task Force on Multi-Sport Participation.

But at least as often, this time for reflection has helped the association identify areas of weakness that could be turned into strengths. For example:

  • It allowed us to be among the nation’s earliest adopters of concussion protocols, and then to see the need to appoint a task force to address contact/collision exposure during football practice.

  • It allowed us to be among the earliest adopters of regular-season recommendations and postseason requirements for managing high heat and humidity.

  • It allowed us to move from the back of the room to nearly head of the class in terms of state high school association health and safety training requirements for coaches.

It was only because the MHSAA operated with a talented and empowered staff that the executive director could devote time to the NFHS Network during the past five years, serving as the Network board chairman during its first five years of operation. This forward-looking initiative is arguably the most effective platform the National Federation of State High School Associations has ever had for promoting school-based sports and the values of educational athletics.

A hands-off, lead-by-example leadership style unlocks the time leaders need to look down the road and around the corner, to try to separate trendy fad from fundamental trend.

Sports is a slave to defined season and contest starting and stopping points that promote routine. But in today’s world, school sports requires anything but routine thinking. And breaking from routine thinking demands that high school athletic association leaders leave their staff alone and replace as many supervisory hours as possible with opportunities to learn from people in other places working in other disciplines ... and then to disrupt our routines with some of those ideas.