Logo

Marketing Through Middle Schools

October 8, 2013

Often, when I’m not sure that a big change in a policy or procedure of the Michigan High School Athletic Association would be good or bad for school sports in Michigan, I ask myself:  “If we were creating the MHSAA for the first time today, would we do this? Would this change be what we do today?”

Applying this question to the subject of 6th-graders, I believe we would create an association and develop rules that would engage 6th-graders and serve them. Sixth-graders would not be orphans, but a part of the MHSAA, just as they are a part of most of our member school 7th- and 8th-grade buildings.

Young people are starting sports much younger today than 100 years ago when the MHSAA was created, or 50 years ago when the MHSAA was incorporated. If the MHSAA were created today to serve any students before 9th grade, I’m certain it would not leave out 6th-graders who are walking the same halls with 7th- and 8th-graders, and who have been playing competitive sports almost since the first day they starting walking at all.

Furthermore, I’m one of many with this opinion: the most important thing we can do to enhance high school sports is to grow junior high/middle school sports programs.

The earlier we disconnect young people from non-school sports and engage them in school-sponsored sports, the better our chances are of keeping high school athletic programs healthy, and the better our prospects are of keeping both participation rates and conduct standards high.

School sports is in competition for hearts and minds of young people. Our competition includes movies, jobs, cars, video games, boyfriends and girlfriends and club sports . . . especially club sports.

School sports needs to market itself better, and part of better is to be available earlier – much sooner in the lives of youth.

More contests at the junior high/middle school level and more opportunities for 6th-graders should be parts of our marketing strategies on behalf of educational athletics generally.

Not In School Sports

June 5, 2015

When those involved in high-profile major college sports offer advice to us in lower profile but perhaps higher principled school sports, we can quickly lose our patience.
Why, for example, would we ever listen to scheduling suggestions for high school basketball from the higher level that schedules games every day of the week, at any time of the week, anywhere on this continent or another?
These behaviors in major college basketball describe an athletic program that is orphaned from the academic mission of the colleges and universities to which they increasingly have become disconnected. We can’t let that happen to school sports.
Major college athletics is in an “arms war” of escalating costs for extravagant facilities and exorbitant coaches’ salaries. Blinded by their own ballooning budgets, college folks’ foolish suggestions for more frequent and distant high school games would increase the operational costs in the athletic departments of struggling and sometimes bankrupt school districts. We can’t let that happen in school sports.
Only when major college sports gets its house in much better order will any of its people earn the slightest right to suggest new policies and procedures for school sports. For now, much of what we see in high-profile college sports shows us what we should not do, not what we should do, in high school sports.