Logo

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:

  • 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.

  • We know that heading the ball in soccer is injurious, especially to younger athletes, and especially to females.

  •  We know that checking from behind is a cause of serious injury in ice hockey.

  • We wonder if protective headgear has a place in soccer, or if protective head and face protection has a future role in softball.

  • 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.

Not Acting Like Grownups

December 26, 2015

Take a look at Fox Sports Detroit today, the second of two days replaying the 2015 MHSAA 11-Player Football Finals at Ford Field.

What I’d like you to see – what I’m most proud of – is the behavior of the players.

Score a touchdown? Then hand the ball to the official, without any childish end zone dancing.

Sack the quarterback? Then head back to the huddle, without any ridiculous pointing and prancing.

So different from the professional game.

But sadly, some of that bad behavior is settling to the college level; and sometimes, there’s even a hint of it in our high school games.

But for now, the players behaving most maturely are the youngest, and behaving least maturely are the oldest.