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Moving Forward

December 28, 2012

Coaches will often convey to their teams a variation of this theme:  “If we’re not moving forward, we’re falling behind.”  And with such immediate feedback – the next contest – coaches can measure their team’s progress quite easily. Progress is harder to measure for the organizations that serve and support coaches and athletes.

If we are doing our jobs well, we will have both an “inside game” and an “outside game.”  We will create our own opportunities to improve our services and we will be alert to opportunities to improve ourselves when they are handed to us or forced upon us from outside sources.  Both types of change can be positive.

  • Change from inside has the benefit of institutional knowledge.  This change can be informed, measured and careful to avoid unintended consequences that hurt more than help customers.
  • Change from outside can be less rational but also less restrained by history and culture.  It can be more disruptive in a positive sense, perhaps more innovative in origin and more expansive in impact.

It’s my sense that, as the calendar turns from 2012 to 2013, the MHSAA is at the merging of two lanes of traffic – an inside lane of change combining with an outside lane change – which will modify some services and move them forward at unprecedented speeds during the new year and the next.

  • This has been obvious as we have partnered with ArbiterSports to prepare the ArbiterGame scheduling software for our member schools.  Hard work internally that’s about to show results to schools and their publics.
  • This may become obvious as we expand our schedule of inexpensive camps for inexperienced officials.  This could be an antecedent to additional training requirements for MHSAA tournament officials.  The public expects better, and we can do better.
  • This may also become obvious as we expand offerings and then add requirements for coaching education focused on maximizing good health and minimizing risk.  There is a gathering parade of experts and evidence advocating for much more training for many more coaches; and we must find our way to the head of that column.

Our Drop in the Ocean

December 18, 2015

It has been difficult, recently, for us to get too worked up over the complaints submitted to this office about officials’ calls, coaches’ decisions, students’ ineligibilities and tournament times and venues. All of this seems petty in light of the terrorism in Paris and other places, and the worldwide refugee crisis as innocent people flee from atrocities in their homelands.

Try to imagine the pain in Paris and other places of recent mass execution. Try to imagine the horror that refugees have faced in their native countries and their ongoing agony in the camps that contain them for years while more “civilized” nations struggle politically and economically with decisions that define their humanity.

But now, as often before, we remind ourselves that the job we are paid to do requires our focused attention and best efforts as we try to make our small niche in the world of sports – our drop of water in the ocean of the world’s concerns – a little bit better each day.

And also now, as often before, we try to interpret how the worldwide human condition affects us and might be affected by us. Affects us, for example, with the need to improve tournament venue security. Is affected by us, for example, by delivering programs that help create in young athletes those qualities that will make them good citizens of their future world – adults who are respectful, tolerant and compassionate.

When I traveled in Northern Africa recently, I encountered immense admiration for the United States – what our hosts always referred to as “America.” People elsewhere look past the shallow or spiteful political rhetoric of our so-called leaders and candidates for leadership to see a disciplined freedom exercised by the citizens of our country that is still, in spite of our shortcomings, the world’s best hope for peace and prosperity.

This country is unique in the world. And school-sponsored sports exist in this country like no other place on earth. There just might be a connection. Which is why – even when the world’s problems seem too large for us to impact – by doing our best every day to deliver these programs, we actually may be performing a vital role.