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Fun Factors

June 3, 2016

It is well documented that the No. 1 reason youth from age 6 through high school participate in sports is to have fun. Fun is the outcome they seek most. But what does fun mean to them?

That was the question on my mind as I read the work of George Washington University, Boston College and Georgia Southern University researchers in a paper published in March of 2015 in the Journal of Physical Activity & Health, and as I tried to understand their “four fundamental tenets of fun in youth soccer within 11 fun-dimensions composed of 81 specific fun-determinants.” Eighty-one? I guess my question isn’t so simple to answer.

But, with one-third of youth sports participants dropping out of organized sports participation each year (and as many as 70 percent dropping out by age 13), it’s important we look for answers.

The researchers have developed a “Fun Map” that allows them to see young soccer players’ responses in clusters. They have discovered “social” aspects of participation – for example, team friendships and team rituals – received significantly more favorable responses from the athletes than other aspects.

Top-rated determinants tend to be ...

  • Hanging out with teammates outside of practice or games.

  • Having a group of friends outside of school.

  • Carpooling with teammates to practices and games.

  • Going out to eat as a team.

  • End of season/team parties.

  • Meeting new people.

  • Being a part of the same team year after year.

One of the lead researchers has said independent of this paper that the responses of parents and coaches differ – that their “Fun Maps” don’t match the young players’ – which concerns the researchers, and requires attention by youth sports leaders.

Tracking the Transfer Rule

September 19, 2017

We are not the first generation of school leaders to be concerned about athletic transfers in secondary school sports.

Lewis L. Forsythe, in his 1950 book Athletics in Michigan High Schools, described his era and earlier this way: “... there were enough who transferred for advantage, as they thought, in athletic opportunities to give wide currency to the term ‘tramp athletes.’ These were usually students who became ineligible in schools in which they had first enrolled, or became otherwise disaffected in their home situation and went elsewhere to continue school. It was possible, for example, for a boy to play football at Ann Arbor one season, drop out of school until the next March first, and then enter Jackson High school. Here he could make himself eligible for baseball and track by merely ‘passing’ in ten hours (later twelve hours) of work from time to time according to the reporting methods of the school, and then leave without taking final examinations. The next semester he might enroll in Detroit High School, and, by satisfying eligibility requirements for the current semester, play football in that school. With no age limit and no required check-up on eligibility in another school, this could go on for at least five years.”

Mr. Forsythe, writing in 1950, cited concerns as early as 1901, which led the state athletic committee to adopt the first transfer rule for school sports in Michigan. It required a student going from one secondary school to another to present a certificate from administrators of the school left that the student was eligible under the athletic rules of the time. The issue of the time was that students who were performing poorly in the classroom of one school would attempt to escape ineligibility due to academic deficiencies by transferring to another school

Two years later, a rule was adopted to address undue influence (recruiting) that required all schools to sever all relationships with a school that attempts to influence any athlete to change schools.

A year later (1904), this proposal was debated: “A student who has played on a football team, or on a baseball team, or who has taken part in any track events, going from one school to another, shall be ineligible to enter any secondary athletic contest for one year, unless the parents of such student move from one school district to another ...”

It took 20 years for a rule change to actually be made in this direction: “No student who has been enrolled as a high school student in any high school shall be permitted to participate in any interscholastic contest as a member of any other high school until he has been enrolled in such school for one full semester, unless the parents of such student actually change their residence to the second school district. In the latter case, the student will be as eligible as he was in the school from which he withdrew.”

There, in the first code of rules promulgated by the Michigan High School Athletic Association in 1924, is the core of our 2017 rule ... ineligible for one semester, with the exception for an actual change of residence.

Today we debate that the period of ineligibility is too short and the residency exception is too lenient.

As for the period of ineligibility, across the U.S., one year is more common than one semester. As for the residency exception, it exists everywhere. In fact, in some places the “transfer” rule is referred to as the “residency” rule.