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The Investment

February 3, 2015

Last month, Steve Christilaw who writes for the Spokane (WA) Spokesman-Review, ended an opinion piece with these statements:
“. . . a strong, vibrant society invests in its future by investing in young people. What our youth can learn from playing sports are life lessons we, as a society, place at a high value.

“How we pay for it all – education, the arts and athletics – has become a political football . . . and it deserves to be treated as the serious and significant investment that it truly is.”
Previous to that conclusion, Christilaw opined from his experience that the values of participation in school-sponsored sports are different than what young people gain in non-school club teams where the focus is more often on one’s self than cooperating with a team and representing a school or entire community.
There are those, of course, who see athletics as a distraction from the educational mission of academic institutions. I don’t doubt that can be the case in some places on some occasions; and I know from experience that leadership must be vigilant to keep a lid on the program and resist those who wish to take school sports to extremes.
But athletic programs which are true to the mission of supporting the educational mission of schools are far more the rule than the exception, most often operating at small fractions of the school budget, and most often involving large majorities of the student body.
A “serious and significant investment” indeed.

An Easy Call

April 6, 2016

A few people of limited perspective blame the MHSAA for the loss by MSU’s women’s basketball team in the NCAA tournament last month on our refusing to shuffle off the Michigan Girls High School Basketball Semifinals and Finals to some other time or place.

It wasn’t a bad call in Michigan that caused MSU’s loss in Mississippi. It wasn’t even a tough call for us; it was the only call.

No way would we dash the dreams of 16 teams or even diminish the experience of coaches, players, parents and spectators surrounding those 16 deserving girls high school basketball programs.

No way would we damage relationships with vendors, broadcasters and sponsors who have expectations of, or even legally binding agreements for, a certain event, on certain dates, at a certain site.

The NCAA has changed the format of its women’s tournament frequently, and it may change its policies and procedures again before next March, or before the contract expires for the MHSAA’s Girls and Boys Basketball Semifinals and Finals at MSU following the 2017 tournaments. So we are not in a panic about future tournaments.

We hope to keep the MHSAA girls and boys tournaments together; and we are confident both MSU and the greater Lansing community see the significant benefits of hosting these events.