Default Setting
January 25, 2012
In the computer world we’ve become accustomed to the “default setting,” a place our computer returns without any intervention on our part.
It is not too long a leap to apply this metaphor to school-based sports. To suggest that with major college and professional sports programs crashing with scandals and strikes, the safe setting in the world of sports is interscholastic athletics.
With the absence of gaudy glitz and glamour, school-based sports has reduced possibilities for “operator error.” It is almost as if school sports is fresh out of the box, pre-installed with policies and procedures that allow coaches and administrators to operate with a minimum of moves, motivations and messages.
I said during MHSAA Update Meetings last fall that our current theme is “cheap and simple” – that is, doing what we can to keep costs down and procedures simple during these days when school personnel have reduced resources, including time, to devote to school sports. Increasingly, I see the challenge as providing the MHSAA membership fresh from the box services. For example . . .
- This was the primary motivation for the MHSAA moving to online rules meetings for coaches and officials that has saved them countless hours and miles to fulfill their meeting requirements in recent years.
- This has been the primary motivation behind the digital broadcasting program by which member schools have a safe, reliable place for streaming school productions of both athletic and non-athletic events.
- This is the primary motivation for the ArbiterGame electronic management tools being developed for member high school athletic departments fully integrated with MHSAA policies, systems and data.
In a world of increasing costs and complexities, ours is a difficult challenge to keep things cheap and simple in school sports; but we’ll be trying.
Student-Centered Coaching
August 1, 2017
The November 1929 Bulletin of the Michigan High School Athletic Association includes this editorial reprinted from the Oct. 7, 1929 Grand Rapids Herald which invites discussion about what more we might do to promote leadership and sportsmanship in school-sponsored sports today.
“Football teams of Greenville and Ionia high schools Saturday introduced an innovation the nature of which challenges consideration of other Michigan schools. From the time the first whistle blew for Saturday’s game until its close the professional coaches employed by the two schools had no contact with players. Between the halves the usual harangue by the coach was dispensed with in favor of a review of play by players. * * * The result of such a policy is unsullied amateurism along the lines we often have urged. The players are on their own. They do their own thinking as well as playing. Under the system as usually followed the coach sits on the sidelines. If he sees an opportunity for a plan of play differing from that being followed he sends in a substitute who carries instructions: ‘Stick to forward passes. Bang away at their left end,’ etc. Between the halves the coach points out faults and emphasizes opportunities for the final half. In net effect the coach directs the play. The initiative of captain or quarterback is permitted only so long as the coach approves. Under the Greenville system the captain is the only recognized leader of the team. He directs substitutions, orders plays, advises players, etc. At Greenville school boys played against school boys. On other western Michigan gridirons a coach is the 12th member of every team. * * * The plan adopted at Greenville was suggested by President Angell of Yale in his annual report for 1927-28. He urged that, ‘There is a wide and well-grounded sentiment that the control of our games should be put back more fully into the hands of the players.’ Yale has not heeded Prexy Angell’s advice, but the New York State Public High School Athletic Association has adopted it as also have some Detroit high schools. It takes the sting of professionalism out of the scholastic game. The able coach still has ample opportunity to prove his worth in teaching the fundamentals of the game and in developing ‘football brains’; but when the whistle blows it is high school team against high school team. What’s the matter with trying that in Grand Rapids? What, if any, are the arguments against it?”