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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.

Shortcomings

April 1, 2014

A student was badly hurt in an Ice Hockey Regional Tournament game last season. A split second after dropping the puck to a teammate, and still looking in that direction, this player received the shoulder of an opposing player just seconds after coming on the ice as a legal substitute. The hit did not appear to target the head, nor seem excessively aggressive; but it was delivered to an unsuspecting and exposed player.

No penalty was called; but when the veteran and highly rated official saw video of the play, he didn’t hesitate to say, “I missed it. A penalty should have been called.”

There were other shortcomings in the delivery of this tournament experience that we regret, including that the game was managed in more partisan fashion than the MHSAA prescribes and that the on-call ambulance was slow to arrive on scene.

Within the leadership of the schools involved there has been a sense of understanding that there can be injuries in sports, especially collision sports; and that sometimes they occur on legal plays and sometimes occur during illegal plays that were not penalized.

In these circumstances, the MHSAA does not seek the punishments that a few incensed adults call for. Rather than looking backward at retribution, the MHSAA’s legal role and moral responsibility requires a more forward look toward remedies. 

For example:

  • How can we use this excellent official’s “no-call” as a teachable moment for other officials on a subject that is already a point of special emphasis in the NFHS Ice Hockey Rules?
  • How can we use this situation as a teachable moment in preparation of coaches and players?
  • How can we use this situation to improve the environment at this and all other Ice Hockey Tournament venues?

We know with certainty that both the content and the delivery of our online and face-to-face communications for 2014-15 will be affected by this very uncommon and unacceptable experience.