Jousting at Windmills
July 19, 2012
Charles Barkley uttered famously last month that the worst thing that ever happened to basketball was the AAU.
While it doesn’t all occur under the Amateur Athletic Union’s banner, Mr. Barkley is not the first “authority” to offer such a brash opinion and to blame the AAU for much of what is bad about the current state of non-school basketball, where street agents and shoe companies corrupt children and their coaches, and where basketball is played with little emphasis on fundamental skills and team play.
Certainly, there are others to blame, including all who have made college and professional basketball a business lucrative enough to encourage excesses and unethical practices. And all of this is bigger than any one state high school athletic association can change.
Nevertheless, the MHSAA is in its fourth year of quixotic jousting with the monster about which so many have been complaining so long.
Tomorrow for boys, and then eight days later for girls (July 26), the MHSAA is teaming up again with the Basketball Coaches Association of Michigan (BCAM) to provide Reaching Higher, “an advance placement course” for students who have both the interest and potential to participate in college basketball on some level.
Through Reaching Higher we intend for players and parents to gain greater appreciation for the rules and realities of the college recruitment process and for what it takes both academically and athletically to qualify for and succeed in intercollegiate basketball.
Click here to view the details.
Representative Voices
April 4, 2017
The Michigan High School Athletic Association is governed by a Representative Council of 18 members and a designee of the State Superintendent of Public Instruction. It is important that this representative body actually be representative of the group it serves.
Of the 18 regular members of the Representative Council,
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16 have served as high school athletic directors, with an average tenure of 16.5 years. Eight have also served as junior high/middle school athletic directors, with an average tenure of 11.7 years.
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11 have served as high school assistant principals, averaging 6.2 years.
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5 have served as high school principals, averaging 6.4 years.
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3 have served as junior high/middle school principals, averaging 11.7 years.
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3 have served as superintendents or assistant superintendents, averaging 4.7 years.
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17 of the 18 have served as high school coaches, with an average tenure of 6.9 years. Seven have also served as middle school coaches, with an average tenure of 7.6 years.
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11 have been MHSAA registered officials. The average tenure has been 13.1 years, in an average of 2.1 sports.
To assure representation of both large and small schools in all parts of the state, the MHSAA Constitution requires that four Council members be elected from the Class A and B schools in four different geographic regions, and four be elected from Class C and D schools from those four geographic sections.
Five other Council members are elected by statewide votes, with two of those specifically designated persons serving junior high/middle schools, and one representing private and parochial schools. The public schools within the city of Detroit also have a representative.
To assure representation from females and minorities that might not occur through the election process, the MHSAA Constitution requires that the Council examine its makeup after each election and appoint up to a maximum of four persons at any one time to help address those deficiencies. The Council sometimes uses this appointment process to bring better representation to a part of the state that is underrepresented through the election process.
It goes almost without saying that nearly all of the Council members participated in competitive school sports and are the parents of participants in interscholastic athletics.
All in all, it’s a team with breadth and depth that touches most of the constituent bases of high school sports in Michigan.