Data is Due
December 4, 2015
Allow me to wander way outside my expertise for a moment … to quantum physics. I believe this is the discipline where it is said that “something doesn’t exist until it is described and measured.”
This statement embodies one of the reasons the MHSAA has mandated that, beginning this school year, member schools must report all possible head injuries in the practices and events of school sports. We want to get at least a general description and approximate measurement of our story here as we listen to the nationwide narrative about health and safety in school sports.
Early returns – that is, preliminary numbers for fall sports – are being presented to the MHSAA Representative Council today. A public release will follow before the end of the year. A more complete report – based on fall, winter and spring sports – will be provided after the conclusion of the 2015-16 school year. And in the future, year-to-year comparisons of the numbers will provide a more meaningful story.
The MHSAA is also gathering data from two pilot programs that are intended to increase attention on sideline concussion detection and recordkeeping, and also from the concussion care insurance the MHSAA has purchased for all participants in all MHSAA member junior high/middle schools and high schools beginning this school year.
Data from all three initiatives may help those who make the equipment and prepare the rules of play in the ongoing campaign to make our good school sports programs even better.
Our Own Worst Enemies
September 26, 2017
The early history of school sports was in four phases. It began as activities that students alone would organize. Then schools saw the need to supervise. Then schools created statewide high school athletic associations to standardize. Then a national federation of those state associations brought an end to corporate and college efforts to nationalize school sports. All of this between the U.S. Civil War and World War II.
The entire history of school sports has had one overriding narrative. Inherent in the struggles that defined each phase of the early history, and every decade since, has been the struggle between those who believe competitive athletics is an asset for schools intent on educating students in body, mind and spirit, versus those who believe interscholastic athletic programs are a distraction at best and, at worst, damaging to the character development of students. There is much evidence to support both sides of this long debate.
Sometimes, the advocates for school-sponsored sports have been, and are, their own worst enemies. What the advocates of school sports must realize is that the more they do to enlarge the scope of school sports ... more games, longer seasons, further travel, escalating hype ... the more they prove that the opponents of school sports have been correct.
As they encourage the chasm between athletics and academics and between school sports' haves and have-nots to widen; as sports teams are outfitted in uniforms that are fancier and funded for travel that is further, while classroom resources are fewer; as sportsmanship declines and athletic transfers increase; the so-called “progressive” thinkers help make the case that competitive athletics is bad for students, schools and society.
Opposition to escalation in school sports is not old fashioned; it's the only way to assure the future of sports in schools ... the only way to save school sports from itself.