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A Hot Topic

July 10, 2012

It is a terrible irony that Georgia saw two of its high school football players die late last summer when it’s the Georgia High School Association that was providing us with the best information we’ve ever had about the risks of heat illness and death.

The deaths occurred in the third year of a thorough three-year study in Georgia that is reinforcing common sense. The study is confirming who is most at risk and when they’re most at risk.

  • Who is most at risk? Linemen more than other players; underclassmen more than older players; those who have had the flu or similar sickness more than others.
  • When are they most at risk? During the season’s first week more than the second. During the second practice of a double session day more than the first. During the second half of the second practice more than the first half, and, early in the morning when humidity is often highest.

It all makes perfect sense: the chubby 9th or 10th grader during the second half of the second practice during the first week of the season. And because it’s statistically predictable, heat illness is almost entirely preventable.

There is some danger here in over-generalizing and over-simplifying, but awareness of these tendencies will help coaches to schedule and administrators to legislate around high-risk scenarios. We expect both will be happening in Michigan.

Momentum

August 4, 2017

The 2017-18 school year holds great potential for the Michigan High School Athletic Association and for school sports in Michigan. Only time will tell us if the potential is greater for good than for bad.

There is positive momentum in promoting participant health and safety as the last of three advances in the health and safety preparation of coaches is implemented, as high schools’ mandatory concussion reporting and MHSAA-purchased concussion care “gap” insurance for 6th- through 12th-graders enter year three, and as higher limits of accident medical insurance is purchased by the MHSAA for all member junior high/middle schools and high schools, effective this month.

There is positive momentum in serving and supporting junior high/middle school programs where membership was up five percent last year over the year before. The MHSAA had an enjoyable, brand-broadening experience as “presenting sponsor” at a half-dozen junior high/middle school league track & field meets this past spring; and the MHSAA will be doing so during fall, winter and spring junior high/middle school tournaments during the 2017-18 school year.

The MHSAA’s Task Force on Multi-Sport Participation continues to develop strategies that focus on junior high/middle school students and their parents and to address the greatest health threat in youth sports – overuse injuries as the result of year-round sports specialization; and the Task Force is developing tools that help define and defend educational athletics.

Beneath these three over-arching themes, the MHSAA is addressing some pressing new problems – like what to do about venues that are no longer available to us for MHSAA tournaments in girls and boys basketball and individual wrestling – as well as some chronic concerns – like recruiting and retaining contest officials and athletic-related transfers. The loss of officials and the rise of athletic-related transfers are problems of nearly epidemic proportions.

The amount of resources the MHSAA will be able to bring to all these topics will be affected by the number of controversies that arise during the normal course of essential business in administering programs, policies and penalties. Such controversies can knock us off message, and rob us of resources that could allow us to be doing more of the positive things we know need to be done.

There is also the potential that we get distracted by the National Federation of State High School Associations, some of whose member state association CEOs want to talk more about NFHS sponsorship of national tournaments, even after decades of opposition to such events from both state and national educational associations, as well as clear and convincing evidence that no organization – from Little League to the NCAA – has been able to conduct national tournaments without adding to their existing problems and creating new pressures and new problems.

Excesses and abuses in school sports have their own momentum. We should not create more by NFHS sponsorship of the very events it was created to end.