The Massachusetts Model
August 19, 2016
Late last spring the veteran executive director of the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association, Bill Gaine, spent a half-day at the offices of the Michigan High School Athletic Association to share insights about ways state association staff can serve the mission of educational athletics. Here are some of my notes from that experience:
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“Steal and build.” At the MIAA, the approach has been to steal the good ideas of others and build upon those ideas.
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“Marry student life with academic life.” The MIAA leadership tries to make an intentional, purposeful connection between the after-school and school programs of MIAA schools.
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“Connect rhetoric with policies and programs. You can’t have just policies or only programs; you must have both.”
Over 18 years, five pillars of policy and programs have evolved for the MIAA: Health and Wellness in 1984, Sportsmanship in 1993, Coaches Education in 1998, Student Leadership in 2001, and Community Service in 2002. All constituents get the whole package all the time, according to Gaine; and there is an MIAA staff person in charge of each pillar.
The “5 Pillars” is the curriculum the MIAA teaches athletic directors, with specific lesson plans. Gaine says, “The AD is the school’s curriculum coordinator for educational athletics.”
When Seasons Matter
April 6, 2018
There are people who want to fuss with Michigan High School Athletic Association tournament structures because, they say, they “want the regular season to mean something.” We need to guard against that thinking and such talk.
In school sports done right, the regular season always means something, even for a team which loses every game.
In school sports done right, practice means even more, because coaches and athletes interact in practice far more than games.
People who want to provide tournament postseason perks to teams which win more games than others are likely to reward the wrong things, like the teams that gathered transfers from other schools.
They are likely to miss the right things, like the teams that started slowly but improved over a truly meaningful season of practices and contests.
They are likely to miss the fact that some teams lost key players due to ineligibility or injury or gained them late in a season and where, in either case, team records are not a meaningful measure of the season.
Let’s not be fooled. Let’s not be trapped in the mindset of sport models that are more about business than education.
Gerrymandering postseason tournaments does more to undermine the integrity of the postseason than honor the regular season.