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.
The Importance of Play
September 9, 2016
In the usual post-Olympic sports news coverage there was the predictable commentary about over-commercialization of the Olympic movement and corruption of the Olympic ideal. Is this really what the Greeks intended?
Of course not.
But really, what do we do today that has any resemblance to what we intended a century ago when the “modern” Olympic movement was resurrected, much less to what was intended 27 centuries earlier when the ancient Olympics began?
But at least one thing with ancient Greek roots remains unchanged. It is this.
Plato, student of Socrates, mentor of Aristotle and founder of the “academy” in Athens during the heyday of the ancient OIympics, wrote that more can be learned about a person in an hour of play than a year of conversation.
That has not changed.
And that is one very important of very many reasons why play of a competitive nature – not mere recreation – matters, just as much today as 28 centuries ago. In fact, in this “modern” world of nonstop electronic conversation, the hour of physical engagement between people may be our most revealing communication.