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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.

Rush to Ridicule

February 5, 2016

Last month the statewide high school athletic association of a neighboring state sent to its member schools a reminder of its sportsmanship standards. From almost all media reports you would have thought the association did a terrible thing.

In fact, the athletic association did nothing wrong – nothing that it and similar organizations have not done many times before to point people away from declining standards of sportsmanship prevalent in other programs and point people toward behavior that is more appropriate for an educational setting – i.e., in programs sponsored and conducted by educational institutions.

Then one of that athletic association’s schools did an unsurprising thing – and what dozens of schools, perhaps hundreds of schools, have done many times before. It distributed the athletic association’s message to its students and coaches.

Where this good work went bad was an isolated incident where one student-athlete at one school posted a profane reaction on social media, criticizing the message; and the student’s school suspended the student from a few contests.

That’s the story. But it’s been mangled by most professional and social media which have rushed mindlessly to ridicule the athletic association.

The association was not wrong to promote positive cheering sections and mutual respect during athletic events. And the association is taking an amazingly high (sportsmanlike?) road to say that it will use this media fiasco as an opportunity to review its sportsmanship guidelines.

We have proven in this state through our Battle of the Fans, a contest conceived by our Student Advisory Council, that cheering sections can be larger and louder by encouraging positive behavior; fun that is also respectful. We prohibit no specific cheers, but we promote positive cheers and the schools where that is the norm.

In a society where standards of all kinds appear to be slipping, this is praiseworthy work.

Click here to follow the MHSAA Battle of the Fans Contest