Dangerous Plays
February 26, 2013
The MHSAA’s fourth health and safety thrust for the next four years focuses on competition rules. It intends to locate the most dangerous plays in each sport and to try to reduce their frequency. For example:
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We know that kickoff returns, punt returns and interception returns – plays in the open field with a change in direction – are the most dangerous football game situations.
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We know that heading the ball in soccer is injurious, especially to younger athletes, and especially to females.
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We know that checking from behind is a cause of serious injury in ice hockey.
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We wonder if protective headgear has a place in soccer, or if protective head and face protection has a future role in softball.
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We know that ACL injuries in female basketball players and volleyball players is near epidemic and wonder if there is equipment or conditioning that can be mandated or recommended to save our players from what are serious and sometimes career-ending injuries.
We can make changes ourselves – through MHSAA sport committees – for the subvarsity level, but our committees can only make recommendations to national rules committees for varsity level play. Over the next four years, we will be asking our sport committees to give more time to the most dangerous plays in their sport – identifying what they are and proposing how to reduce that danger.
Swimming Lessons
January 19, 2016
I found a place between Christmas and New Year’s Day that was out of Internet reach. For four days and three nights I spent most of the days in the water looking downward into an ocean of coral canyons surrounded by swarms of colorful fish, and much of the nights on the open deck of a catamaran looking up at a nearly full moon moving between stars and swirling clouds. Here is some of what I learned from experiences, rather than from Google, on those days.
First, flying fish really do fly, on average, about the length of a football field.
Second, sea urchins have an edible element, if the spiny critters are smoked in a fire of coconuts and palm fronds and then soaked in saltwater, and if you are either desperately marooned on some remote island or just trying to be nice to the local residents you just met who believe the urchin's slimy, salty core is a delicacy that hospitality requires be shared and graciousness demands be appreciated.
And, more relevant to the work we share that I tried unsuccessfully to tune out for these four days, I learned ...
What you see in the ocean is distorted until you put on your goggles and get beneath the surface of the water. Getting beneath the surface of things is necessary for clear vision.
What you see first is likely to be the flashy fish, while the greater significance is observed more slowly in what appears to be their inanimate habitats, which turn out to be alive with movement if you wait and watch for it. Patience is necessary for clear vision.
The wavy six-inch line of purple coral was really the lips of a large clam that actually separate a fraction of an inch every minute or so to take in the nourishment of the sea. The brown stump below it was really a sea cucumber that actually moves an inch or two a day to vacuum the ocean floor. I saw none of this until I got beneath the surface, and waited.