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More Than A Myth

September 5, 2014

Without a sure sense of what the outcome should be, we are engaging school administrators and others in a year-long discussion of possible revisions in out-of-season coaching rules.
We know that we would like the outcome to be simpler rules that are easier to understand and enforce; and that we would like to permit coaches to spend more time with student-athletes out of season; and that we want none of this to make coaches feel like they must coach one sport year-round to be successful or make student-athletes feel like they must play a single sport year-round just to make the team.
If there is a policy that can accomplish the good that we hope for and avoid the bad that we fear, we haven’t yet found it or developed it.
There is a temptation to characterize the multi-sport athlete as an anachronism or myth of modern school sports. However, the multi-sport athlete remains the backbone of interscholastic athletic programs in Class C and D schools.
And the multi-sport athlete still appears to be the ideal athlete, regardless of school size. It is an instructive reminder, I think, that the Lansing State Journal named a three-sport star from Ithaca as its high school male athlete of the year for 2013-14, and it was a four-sport athlete from Eaton Rapids who was named the high school female athlete of the year.
Following my presentation to coaches, student-athletes and parents at Jonesville High School last month, a student approached me to offer thanks for our sponsoring bowling. Jonesville won the MHSAA’s 2014 Division 4 Boys Bowling championship; and the young man who thanked me participates in football, bowling and baseball for his school, representing in my mind the kind of student we should strive the hardest to serve as we develop, revisit and revise policies and programs.

Anticipating Collateral Damage

March 23, 2018

When major college sports sneezes, high school sports usually catches a cold.

Throughout history, the National Collegiate Athletic Association has made changes in response to problems in college sports that have resulted in harm to high school sports.

Who can argue that relieving college coaches from the burden of being members of the instructional faculty did anything but weaken the connection between intercollegiate athletics and the educational mission of the sponsoring institutions? That major college football and men’s basketball coaches are the highest paid employees at many universities demonstrates the disconnection.

Who can argue that the creation of athletic grants in aid – scholarships – did anything but raise the pressures on college programs to win and to recruit hard at the high school level? Who can argue that this process got any more upright and above board when NCAA rules were changed to push most of the recruiting process to non-school venues and corporate concerns?

Who is surprised now that the corruption has moved beyond the NCAA’s ability to control and has resulted in investigations by the Federal Bureau of Investigations and indictments followed by player ineligibilities and coach firings?

The worry now is that the NCAA and the National Basketball Association will strike again. Aiming to solve their problems, they likely will add to ours.