Is a Future Possible?
September 8, 2011
While interviewing candidates for a staff position, we posed the question: “What will school sports look like a generation from now?” And we followed up with: “What will the MHSAA need to do to be of relevant service in that future?”
In a follow-up interview with one of the leading candidates, when I invited questions, that candidate turned the tables and asked me what I thought school sports and the MHSAA would look like in 10 or 20 years.
These exchanges, and all that has been changing as school districts chop away at school budgets and programs, has me wondering if a future is possible for school sports. But the answer is almost certainly “Yes.”
School sports have survived two World Wars, the Korean War and Vietnam, as well as the Great Depression and multiple recessions. School sports has existed before and after interstates and the Internet, before and after suburban sprawl and space exploration, before and after television and Twitter, before and after . . . well, you get the point.
Will school sports change? Certainly. But if history is a good indicator, it will change more slowly than the society around it. And many people will cherish that gap.
Data is Due
December 4, 2015
Allow me to wander way outside my expertise for a moment … to quantum physics. I believe this is the discipline where it is said that “something doesn’t exist until it is described and measured.”
This statement embodies one of the reasons the MHSAA has mandated that, beginning this school year, member schools must report all possible head injuries in the practices and events of school sports. We want to get at least a general description and approximate measurement of our story here as we listen to the nationwide narrative about health and safety in school sports.
Early returns – that is, preliminary numbers for fall sports – are being presented to the MHSAA Representative Council today. A public release will follow before the end of the year. A more complete report – based on fall, winter and spring sports – will be provided after the conclusion of the 2015-16 school year. And in the future, year-to-year comparisons of the numbers will provide a more meaningful story.
The MHSAA is also gathering data from two pilot programs that are intended to increase attention on sideline concussion detection and recordkeeping, and also from the concussion care insurance the MHSAA has purchased for all participants in all MHSAA member junior high/middle schools and high schools beginning this school year.
Data from all three initiatives may help those who make the equipment and prepare the rules of play in the ongoing campaign to make our good school sports programs even better.