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Keys to the Corner Office

May 29, 2015

On those rare Sunday mornings when I’m not traveling for one reason or another, my routine is a very early walk during which I purchase the Sunday New York Times.
Reading the Sunday Times has a routine as well: first the Travel section, next Business, then Opinion; and after that, national news and sports and theater in no particular order. And I always read the top of page 2 of the Business section, a regular Q and A by Adam Bryant who features successful businessmen and women. It’s called “Corner Office.”
Week after week, the people profiled will credit the extracurricular activities of their formal education for launching their successful careers. For example ...

  • The chief executive of Bluemercury cited volleyball.

  • The chief executive of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt cited “clubs and sports in high school.”

  • The chief executive of the Hogan Lovells law firm was captain of his high school football team and president of the student council.

Obviously, there are many individuals who participated in those school activities and did not ascend to chief executive status, just as many other CEOs earned the keys to their corner office without participation in school athletics and activities.
But it has been difficult for me to miss how routine it is for the “Corner Office” to make the same connection I do – that outside the classroom school sports and activities are linked both anecdotally and statistically to leadership in later life pursuits.

Enhancing Public Health

August 29, 2017

Due to overuse injuries from sport specialization that is too early, too intense and too prolonged, youth may be increasingly susceptible to sports-related injuries; but school sports themselves have never been safer – for obvious reasons:

  • Equipment is the best it’s ever been.

  • Coaches have never been better trained in health and safety.

  • Practice and competition rules have never been more safety conscious.

  • Officials have never had more authority to penalize unsafe play.

  • Medical care and insurance has never been as available as it is today.

Our objective is not merely to keep making school-sponsored sports safer and safer year after year. In school sports – educational athletics – we also have the objective that students learn habits of a healthy lifestyle they can carry into adulthood.

In this way, school sports mitigates some of the damage of youth sports and contributes to the general good, to improved public health in America.

All that we do has that goal, and it’s a finish line we have not yet crossed.