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More than Fun and Games

September 24, 2014

Five years ago there were many skeptics when the MHSAA redesigned its website and included twice-weekly blogs by the executive director and active Facebook and Twitter pages as well as YouTube channels, and gave constituents and critics alike an opportunity to post comments. Some skeptics said we were being distracted with frivolous fun and games, and others said all this interaction would be a persistent source of problems.
In fact, for the MHSAA, this constituent engagement has been about much more than fun and games and it’s been a means to solve problems.
Our primary use of social media and other means of constituent engagement has been to drive people to high school events and to the MHSAA website where the distinctive messages of educational athletics would stand out.
Rather than creating problems, allowing the crowd to enter scores on MHSAA.com has led us to post more accurate scores more rapidly than when we depended on school coaches or administrators alone.
More recently we have been reviewing our event emergency plans and our office business continuation plans, which had been developed before social media became a fact of life; and now we are revising those documents to make social media the primary means of communication during such problems.
It is entirely through social media, primarily Facebook and YouTube – that the MHSAA has caused people to be talking about sportsmanship and inciting larger, more positive student and adult spectator sections at high school contests. That’s our award-winning “Battle of the Fans” that moves into its fourth year in 2014-15.

Economic Indicators

July 19, 2016

We don’t need the Federal Reserve Bank chairwoman to tell us about economic indicators; we have our own way of knowing at the Michigan High School Athletic Association office when the state’s economy is bad or good.

In bad economic times, we experience an increase in those registering to become MHSAA officials. When jobs are lost or hours are cut, a little extra income from officiating can make a big difference to people.

In good economic times, we see a decline in the number of registrations. We lose the officials who are in it for the money and retain the 10,000 hard core, committed officials whom school sports depends on in Michigan.

Another economic indicator is litigation. In bad economic times, fewer people resort to courts to solve disputes; while in good economic times, more people have more money to spend on lawyers to settle their squabbles.

So, what do those indicators tell us about today’s economic news?

Officials registrations in 2015-16 were the lowest in 29 years. And 2015-16 was the busiest year of litigation since 2010.

So, the good news is that the economy is improving. That’s also the bad news.