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Second Half by MHSAA

Family Practice

September 21, 2011

During my first winter on the job with the MHSAA I took my 4th-grade son to his first basketball practice, and I watched uncomfortably when his coach directed him to set a pick.  My son didn’t have a clue what that meant, and was embarrassed; and I felt like a complete and utter failure as a sports dad.

During the drive home, my son asked me what the coach meant when he said “set a pick and then roll to the basket.”

So when we arrived home, I recruited his mom to guard my son as he dribbled the basketball in the living room, pretending the basket was over the fireplace hearth.  I came up behind her and blocked her path as my son dribbled by, opening his path to the “basket.”

We repeated the drill, but this time his mom was wiser and scooted by me to guard my son; and when she did so, I rolled toward the “basket” and called for the ball.  My son offered a perfect pass as I moved unguarded toward the goal.

We repeated the plays with me dribbling and my son setting the pick on his mom, and then rolling toward the goal.

Pick and roll, family style.

And my son couldn’t wait for the next practice.

A Change Narrative

October 13, 2017

Here are five points to describe the essence of possible changes being processed by the Michigan High School Athletic Association for its transfer rule.

  1. We would move from a rule designed years ago for three-sport athletes to a rule that’s equally effective for regulating single-sport athletes.

  2. We would be treating all sports the same, regardless of season – fall, winter, spring. No longer would the transfer rule have a greater impact on winter sport athletes than fall or spring sport athletes.

  3. We would be getting out of the way of more “school of choice” parents who want to move a child from one school to another. If the student has not played a particular high school sport before, then eligibility is immediate in that sport ... at any level, and without any MHSAA Executive Committee action.

  4. We would be causing students who have played a high school sport (and their parents) to pause before they transfer. They would miss the next season in that sport unless one of the 15 stated exceptions to the transfer rule applies. (There is significant sentiment that this apply only to students who have played previously at the varsity level – i.e., if the student has participated previously only at the subvarsity level in a sport, that student could transfer and remain eligible at the subvarsity level; but this would be allowed one time only.)

  5. We would make it even tougher on students (and their parents) to circumvent the athletic-motivated and athletic-related transfer rules by eliminating the automatic residency exception in those special cases. (This is the most hotly debated of the changes being considered.)

The theme is “get out of the way of the benign transfers and get still tougher on the really bad ones.”