An Excuse to Get Together
March 15, 2013
I recently heard a veteran teacher tell the story of years ago when she was leading a church youth group which was meeting regularly to prepare a play. The group met frequently for many months.
Eventually, one of the church members, and parent of one of the youth, asked when the group would be performing their production. The teacher/leader responded, “That’s not the point. The play is just an excuse for getting together.”
Hearing this story resonated with me as I thought back to my years as a high school student who participated in sports, drama and choral music, and as I thought about my two sons who did the same in middle school and high school, and as I thought about my too-brief time as a teacher/coach. The contests, concerts and dramatic performances for the public were almost entirely beside the point.
What was more important by far was getting together with other students to work together on projects outside the classroom. To do positive things, creative things. To experiment under controlled conditions. To develop a team spirit.
This is why it is especially important that schools maintain broad and deep extracurricular options for students. Important particularly that they not only maintain but grow subvarsity programs where the emphasis is more likely to keep focused on practice more than games, and teaching and learning more than winning and recordkeeping.
Internal Medicine
March 20, 2018
When I express concerns for the health of high school basketball, I’m not confusing our problems with the corruption of major college men’s basketball that is under investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Yes, there are some tentacles that reach us, and taint us; but the problems that plague us most are more basic and local.
The concerns I have for high school basketball are captured in scenes that play out much too often across the membership of the Michigan High School Athletic Association. For example:
- Declining participation, with JV and varsity rosters too small to practice 5-on-5 at either level.
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Increasing forfeits.
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Ugly mismatches, with scores so lopsided that it is hard to imagine much teaching or learning can occur.
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Starters transferring; reserves dropping out.
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Confrontations between parents and coaches.
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Faculty coaches becoming a vanishing breed.
These kinds of concerns do not flow from the top down – we can’t blame these issues on the NCAA and NBA. No, our more persistent and perplexing problems percolate up from the youth level.
Often the students who come to our programs have participated in youth sports programs for five to 10 years before they join a school team. They arrive with expectations that often differ from what is intended for school-based programs. They’ve been in a different environment; they have different expectations.
And much of what is coming with youth sports begins to infect school sports.
There is no vaccination that will be 100 percent effective in immunizing us. There is no single solution that can quickly reverse these negative trends in school-based basketball and other school sports. The efforts must be systemic and long-term. And among the efforts that must be made are these
- More attention to coaches education – every coach, every year – where the ethics of educational athletics and the meaning of success in school sports provide the core of the curriculum; and
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More attention to junior high/middle schools – more opportunities for 6th- through 8th-graders to sample school sports and to savor an experience that puts team before individual and learning ahead of winning.