Disappointing Seasons
June 24, 2013
It is appropriate to take the longest day of the year to address one of the long tails of the longest lawsuit in MHSAA history.
In August of 2002, a US District Court gave Upper Peninsula schools three choices for remediating gender discrimination in their sports seasons. They were told to switch seasons for girls volleyball and basketball and do one of three additional things:
1. Place boys and girls in the same season in all sports; or
2. Place UP seasons at the same time as Lower Peninsula seasons in all sports; or
3. Switch UP boys and girls seasons in either soccer or tennis.
For a host of reasons in this state and all others, it has made good sense for many sports to schedule boys and girls in different seasons; and for very many years for many good reasons, UP schools have scheduled their seasons differently than LP schools in several sports. So options 1 and 2 were non-starters.
As for the third option: after girls volleyball and girls basketball, the sport for which UP schools least wanted to have switched seasons was tennis. So soccer was the UP sport selected for the court-approved switched seasons for boys and girls.
In July of 2007, the Federal Court denied a Motion by Intervenors to extract UP soccer from its earlier Order so that UP soccer would not be forced to switch seasons for boys and girls. At the same time in a separate Order, the Federal Court denied a Motion to extract LP tennis from the earlier Order.
The LP tennis community was and is as unhappy with the Federal Court Order as the UP soccer community. In fact, LP tennis has had the greatest participation loss of all sports since the seasons changes, including an almost 23 percent decline in boys tennis participation. Almost one-quarter fewer boys are playing high school tennis today than before the seasons switched in the LP!
In any event, the Federal Court determined in 2007 that the switching of boys and girls seasons in LP tennis and UP soccer was legal (after all, the Court itself had offered the changes as acceptable options in 2002); and the Court said that the MHSAA had gone to extremes to explain all the options to schools and listen to their opinions.
Demonstrating their characteristic independence, UP schools have not switched their boys and girls soccer seasons; and some now want the MHSAA to make an exception so they can play in the MHSAA’s fall boys tournament and spring girls tournament. But unlike those schools, which are not specifically addressed in the Federal Court Order, the MHSAA is subject to that Order and cannot make exceptions or grant waivers without violating the Court’s Order.
Based on the rationale of the 2007 Court Order, there is only a slim chance the Federal Court would ever modify its Order. The best chance will occur when there is a Motion filed jointly by the original parties to the lawsuit. It must address both genders, not just girls. It must be a permanent solution, not a temporary exception. It must require no other sport season be changed, for that would just upset another sport community and derail this effort.
Inner Life
November 25, 2016
Good reading here from Jody Redman, Associate Director of the Minnesota State High School League:
“The goal of interscholastic and youth sports is not to prepare students for a college scholarship or some professional career. It just doesn’t happen that often.
“Seventy-eight percent of youth who play sport will quit by the age of 12 because it just isn’t fun anymore and 97 percent of the students who go on to play at the high school level will have a terminal experience when they graduate. They will no longer play organized sports as they have throughout their youth experience.
“So what’s the point? Why do we play?
“We play to develop students into people with sound moral character that will prepare them for a life that recognizes the humanity of others, that is rich with empathy and compassion and develops in them the moral courage to stand up for what is right. When we only focus on physical skills and accomplishments we don’t give them the skills that will help them over the course of their lifetime, skills that will make the world a better place. We give them very little that has any real inherent value.
“It is time to give sports back to the children who play them. To focus on the true purpose of sports in our children’s lives. For this to happen, we have to establish a clear path, one that defines purpose, promotes values that are important to students and their community and defines success beyond winning.
“When we define success by the holistic development of our children into moral adults of character and compassion, then sports will regain its proper place in our families, schools and communities and most importantly, for the children who play them.”