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On the Move

June 8, 2012

Two members of the MHSAA’s executive staff live on the same side of the same town.  Each lives less than a five-minute drive to the MHSAA building; and yet they live in differently named neighborhoods, taking the names of the public elementary schools which serve their sections of town and the school district.

Students of those two elementary schools feed the one and only public middle school of the district, which feeds the one and only public high school of the district.  Historically, there would not be too much to deter the children raised in these two homes from attending the same schools.

However, if one of the families is Catholic, it might choose to send its children to the Catholic grade school located across the street from the public high school.  And it might decide to send its children to high school at the Catholic high school in the town which neighbors to the west.

If one of the families were inclined, it might choose to home school its children before sending them to the district’s high school or to one of two Christian high schools nearby.

Or perhaps one of the families would choose to send one of their children to a charter school near the location of the mother’s employment.  Perhaps another child would be a school of choice student at a traditional high school convenient to the father’s place of work but in a different school district.  These are common occurrences today that were rare just 15 years ago.

A multitude of other factors could affect the choice of school:

  • One school might be better known than others for a particular curriculum strength, or it might have a strong reputation in drama or music or sports, or in one particular sport.
  • Children are more likely today to have mingled on non-school youth sports teams and to decide to stay together for high school teams.
  • High school students might attend the same summer camps and be attracted to a different group of kids or a coach, and transfer to join the new group or coach.
  • As families relocate more frequently, students are required to transfer; and as the nuclear family becomes less stable, students are more often forced to change domestic settings, and change schools.

These and other factors – some worthy or unavoidable, some unhealthy and contrived – add up to the following:

  • During the entire 1986-87 school year, the MHSAA Executive Committee processed 96 requests by member schools to waive eligibility rules, and 58 of those requests were for student transfers.
  • 25 years later, the total requests for the school year were 462; and of those, 337 were to waive the transfer section of the eligibility regulation.

This demonstrates in numbers what we have observed to be true:  that during the past quarter century, the clientele of high school athletics has become five times more mobile.  It’s one of school sports’ greatest challenges.

Upon Further Review ...

May 12, 2017

A veteran track & field coach wrote critically that the Michigan High School Athletic Association has erred by not implementing numerous proposals of his state coaches association over the years. So this year I was an even more careful than usual observer of the fate of proposals from coaches associations and our own coach-dominated sport committees.

Some proposals from coaches associations don’t even make it to a vote at the MHSAA sport committee level. Others fail to get an affirmative vote, while still others are passed by the committee as a recommendation to the MHSAA Representative Council.

Each of the sport committee recommendations that is received by the time of the League Leadership meeting in mid-February is presented to the league administrators in attendance so they will be aware of what’s flowing in the pipeline toward the MHSAA Representative Council for a vote. It is intended that these sport committee recommendations will be discussed at meetings by each league, and that the MHSAA staff will be notified of questions or concerns that any proposal generates.

MHSAA staff – most often Associate Director Tom Rashid – take some of the proposals on the road, to both league meetings and Athletic Director In-Service programs, where experienced practical minds praise some proposals and poke holes in others.

Many of the recommendations are also discussed at the March conference of the Michigan Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association, and some are made “Position Statements” on which the MIAAA members vote at the conclusion of their conference. It’s interesting to observe that some recommendations that passed coach-dominated sport committees with unanimous support fail to receive 50 percent support by the athletic directors as they make a more circumspect review of the issue.

All along the way, the MHSAA staff is watching, listening, and learning. We learn, for example, that some proposals have negative unintended consequences, that other proposals lack sufficient research or even essential facts, and that in both cases, approval should be denied or at least delayed for more complete development and study.

That was a major theme of this past week’s Representative Council meeting when many committee proposals were, if not derailed, at least detained for later departure. For example:

A proposal to revise the limited team membership rule for 6th-, 7th- and 8th-graders that would allow during the school season up to two dates of non-school participation in all sports except football was tabled in order to gather more membership input.

  • A proposal to alter the three-decade-old MHSAA Baseball Tournament schedule was delayed to consider the effects of and questions raised by the pitching limitation rule that is new this year – a late requirement of the national rules committee.

  • A proposal to seed and bracket District and Regional Basketball Tournaments raised more questions than answers and did not advance.

  • A proposal to require observers in each group at all Lower Peninsula Boys and Girls Regional and Final Golf Tournaments was at least slowed.

  • A proposal to require two days rest between the Semifinal and Final games of soccer Regionals received a yellow card, even though the proposal has good intentions and is part of an evolving package of proposals to make that sport a healthier experience – with more attention to practice and training and less competition.

  • A national soccer committee rule change regarding the color of undergarments was delayed indefinitely by the Council, to avoid both unnecessary confusion and new costs.

  • A proposal to allow additional teams to advance from Regionals to Finals in the MHSAA Lower Peninsula Tennis Tournaments was not adopted – perhaps a good idea in good weather, but problematic in bad.