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Designed and Delivered

March 8, 2016

The benefits of school sports do not occur by accident. They occur by design and by delivery.

It is the design of policies and procedures to keep the program student-focused, school-centered, sensible in scope, safe, sane and sportsmanlike. All core values of educational athletics.

The value is also enhanced by the delivery system – the quality of coaching and expertise of administration.

  • Just as the teacher is the key to learning in the academic classroom, the coach is the key to learning on the athletic team. This is why the MHSAA has designed and delivers a face-to-face, multi-level coaching education program anytime, anywhere in Michigan.

  • The other key of the delivery system is the local school athletic administrator with a skill set that meets the complex demands of a program that operates in an arena of high emotion and risk of injury. This is why Michigan often leads the nation in the number of high school athletic directors who have completed the highest level of training and certification of the National Interscholastic Athletics Administrators Association, and why the Michigan Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association and the MHSAA devote so much time and attention to initial and ongoing athletic director training.

Current Events

November 3, 2017

This is the ninth year that I have been posting blogs twice a week – each Tuesday and Friday. A recent project required I go back through the postings of the eight previous years; and a sidebar of that project is this posting.

I rediscovered that in the fall of 2009, I was writing about topics that remain current today. For example,

  • August 18 – What new sports may be in the future of high school athletics?

  • August 25 – The prospects of 8-player football.

  • September 4 – Baseball pitching rules.

  • September 8 – Video streaming.

  • October 6 – Protection from head injuries.

  • November 17 – Foreign students.

  • November 20 – Football scheduling.

  • November 27 – Football Playoffs.

And on several occasions over the first six months, the topics were problems in school finance and the financial pressures on school sports, reasons for various eligibility rules, changes in playing rules to promote participant safety, tournament classification, and the need for stronger leadership on all levels of school sports.

All of these topics remain current. Proving once again, perhaps, that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Or, that there are no genuinely new topics.