Guild and Guide
December 2, 2016
Today is the first meeting of the full Michigan High School Athletic Association Representative Council of the 2016-17 school year. This is the meeting that tees up some of the topics for action by the Council in March and May.
Posted on the meeting room wall will be banners that remind Council members of the over-arching topics previously identified for 2016-17:
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- Define and Defend Educational Athletics
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Promote and Protect Participant Health and Safety
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Serve and Support Junior High/Middle School Programs
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Recruit and Retain Contest Officials
If we are to make any headway on these topics during this school year and beyond, then we must see the MHSAA’s role is to be both a guild and a guide.
On my bucket list for personal travel is a trip to the mountains of Peru where for a week my wife will weave and I will hike. She will be with a guild that allows her to learn more about her craft, while I’ll be on a high altitude trail to Machu Picchu with a guide that keeps me from getting lost or discouraged.
In similar ways, the MHSAA must be an organization that provides opportunities for people to learn the art of athletic administration and then both points the way and steadies the step of coaches and administrators. We must help new officials get started and stay with it. We must aid and direct team captains and other student leaders.
Our Own Worst Enemies
September 26, 2017
The early history of school sports was in four phases. It began as activities that students alone would organize. Then schools saw the need to supervise. Then schools created statewide high school athletic associations to standardize. Then a national federation of those state associations brought an end to corporate and college efforts to nationalize school sports. All of this between the U.S. Civil War and World War II.
The entire history of school sports has had one overriding narrative. Inherent in the struggles that defined each phase of the early history, and every decade since, has been the struggle between those who believe competitive athletics is an asset for schools intent on educating students in body, mind and spirit, versus those who believe interscholastic athletic programs are a distraction at best and, at worst, damaging to the character development of students. There is much evidence to support both sides of this long debate.
Sometimes, the advocates for school-sponsored sports have been, and are, their own worst enemies. What the advocates of school sports must realize is that the more they do to enlarge the scope of school sports ... more games, longer seasons, further travel, escalating hype ... the more they prove that the opponents of school sports have been correct.
As they encourage the chasm between athletics and academics and between school sports' haves and have-nots to widen; as sports teams are outfitted in uniforms that are fancier and funded for travel that is further, while classroom resources are fewer; as sportsmanship declines and athletic transfers increase; the so-called “progressive” thinkers help make the case that competitive athletics is bad for students, schools and society.
Opposition to escalation in school sports is not old fashioned; it's the only way to assure the future of sports in schools ... the only way to save school sports from itself.