Hat Trick
July 31, 2017
When asked recently to identify the most important work of the Michigan High School Athletic Association at this particular time in the history of school sports in Michigan, I paused only briefly, because there is one initiative that scores a hat trick. It’s the MHSAA Task Force on Multi-Sport Participation.
-
It is a forum for helping us define and defend educational athletics.
-
It is helping us focus on the future of school sports – on the junior high/middle school level, and even younger athletes and their parents, where attitudes are being formed and decisions are being made.
-
It is helping us focus on THE most serious health and safety issue in all of youth sports, which is specialization in one sport that is too early, too intense and too prolonged, leading to overuse injuries that tend to cause a lifetime of chronic injuries and related health problems.
The Task Force has convened five times over 15 months. It is moving now from the phase of identifying issues and challenges to developing tools for administrators and coaches to promote the multi-sport experience for young people.
Tracking Transfers
August 16, 2016
The number of requests to waive rules by Michigan High School Athletic Association school administrators to the MHSAA Executive Committee during the 2015-16 school year dropped to the lowest total since the 2006-07 school year, and the percentage of approved requests exceeded 80 percent for the first time in decades.
Of 453 requests for waiver, 381 (84%) were approved during the Executive Committee’s 12 meetings from August 2015 through June 2016.
As always, requests to waive the transfer rule dominated. There were 291 requests, of which 224 were approved (77%). That’s the first time there were fewer than 300 transfer waiver requests since the 2006-07 school year.
Across the U.S., transfers persist as the most popular and prickly eligibility issue of school sports, especially in states with open enrollment/school of choice. While certainly a greater plague in more populated areas where several schools are often in close proximity, this problem knows no economic boundaries – students bounce from home to home in disadvantaged communities and wealthier parents leverage their advantages to buy homes where they desire their children to be schooled.
While still a very small percentage of all transfer students, high profile athletic-related transfers get headlines and, too often, their new teams grab trophies that elude schools which play by both the letter and the spirit of transfer rules.
Mishandling transfers is still the No. 1 cause of forfeitures in Michigan high school sports. Increasing mobility and the messiness of marital relations keep students on the move, and keep athletic administrators on their toes. Vetting all new students, and getting all information before the new student gets in a game, is a high priority of the full-time professional athletic administrator, and it’s not something many part-time ADs can do.