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:
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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.
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Children are more likely today to have mingled on non-school youth sports teams and to decide to stay together for high school teams.
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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.
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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:
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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.
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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.
The Limitation of Rules – Part 1
September 2, 2016
From the age of 10 to 20, my position as a baseball player was catcher. Sometime during that decade I was taught to return the ball to the pitcher with authority, with a snap throw from my ear, targeting the glove-side shoulder of the pitcher.
I caught every inning of every game, including doubleheaders. In those years, there was less concern than today for protecting the arms of pitchers, and there was no thought given to the throwing arms of catchers.
Today, the shoulder of my throwing arm is shot; I cannot throw a ball overhand with any force.
But here’s the thing. I didn’t ruin my throwing arm in youth and school baseball; I wrecked it as an adult doing silly things with a tennis ball on the beach with my teenage son. We had a blast for a summer afternoon, and I’ve paid for it the rest of my life.
The point of this brief baseball bio is to demonstrate an example of the limitations of rules.
We can identify dozens of risks to student-athletes and we can promulgate an equal number of rules to help them avoid injuries in our programs; but we cannot protect them against a lack of common sense in our programs or accidents in other aspects of their lives.
Even if we implement new rules to limit the number of pitches by a player, what good is that if, after reaching the limit, the pitcher and catcher switch positions? Do we need a rule to address that coaching decision too?
Do we need rules that prohibit large students from practicing against small, or experienced players from competing against inexperienced? How would we ever monitor or enforce such rules? Where do rules leave off and common sense take over?
Even if we put players in bubble wrap for sports, what do we do about their decisions away from sports, perhaps in vehicles, with their friends and their cell phones? Where do laws and rules stop, and personal responsibility start?