The Definition
July 25, 2017
This question was posed to me by a colleague last fall: “How does your state association define education-based athletics and activities?”
My response was as follows:
“Defining and defending educational athletics is one of the MHSAA’s four focus topics of 2016-17. We are striving to encourage and equip our core constituency to ‘blow their own horns’ about the values of school sports, the benefits of multi-sport participation and the meaning of success in educational athletics.
“To us, educational athletics is school-sponsored and student-centered, where the concern is for the whole child. It is local and inexpensive for both participants and spectators. It is amateur. It is inclusive, with as much potential to provide physical, mental and emotional lessons at the junior high/middle school level as the high school level, and in subvarsity programs as varsity programs, and in low profile sports as high profile sports.
“The programs are extracurricular: after the school day is when they should usually occur, and they are after academics in importance. They support the academic mission of schools.
“Educational athletics is not a right but a privilege available to students who meet the standards of eligibility and conduct established by the sponsoring school.”
I hope you agree.
Balancing Football Playoffs
April 18, 2017
Every time the Michigan High School Athletic Association Football Playoffs have been expanded, two voices have been heard – one complaining that too many teams or divisions have watered down the tournament; the other advocating that every school should qualify for the tournament regardless of its regular-season performance.
The playoffs have expanded from 32 to 64 to 128 to 256 to 272 teams; and for 2017, with the addition of 16 more 8-player teams, to 288 of the 626 MHSAA member schools’ football teams in Michigan.
We have reached the point where 46 percent of the schools which sponsor football qualify for the Football Playoffs, and we are approaching closely the point of qualifying every team with winning records during the regular season.
Those stats sound about right for a collision sport conducted mostly outdoors in a cold climate for teenagers. A longer tournament is unwise; a larger tournament is unneeded.
What is needed and wise is more attention to the regular season, and especially to practices which occur at least five times more frequently than games. That’s where the teaching and learning of football skills and life lessons can be everyday occurrences for every team in Michigan.