No Shortcuts
November 28, 2017
Last Tuesday at the office building of the Michigan High School Athletic Association, 49 athletic directors gathered for training. All are first-year ADs, and 38 of them were attending their second training session at the MHSAA.
It was the fourth session for new athletic directors the MHSAA has hosted since late July. A total of 113 different first-year ADs attended.
That’s a typical number of new ADs. And we’re experiencing the typical problems with mistakes and oversights that turn into ineligibilities and forfeits that come not just from new ADs but also from more veteran ADs who have had many new duties added to their days, but with less time and help to do everything that needs to be done.
At one school, an overwhelmed AD resigned after his school’s football and soccer teams had both used ineligible players. The school posted the job opening to replace him with the salary set at 50 percent above the previous pay. It has learned that cutting the budget for sports administration can do a lot more harm than good.
Full-time, continuously trained athletic administrators are essential to the conduct of safe and successful interscholastic athletics. There are no shortcuts to success, and a competent leader who is hungry to keep learning about policies, procedures and best practices is the starting point.
Destiny
January 9, 2018
Editor's Note: This blog originally was posted May 01, 2012, and the timeless message is worth another read.
A University of Wisconsin football player from my hometown years ago was hit from behind in the closing minutes of spring football practice. It caused an injury that required surgery. That caused him to miss the next fall’s football season; and to protect him from further injury, he was allowed to skip the following spring’s football practice and to work out with the Badgers baseball team.
He ended up leading the Big Ten Conference in hitting, and he eventually received the largest signing contract in the history of professional baseball, becoming the first “Bonus Baby” for Gene Autry’s Los Angeles Angels.
“If not for that injury in football,” he once told an audience, “caused by an unskilled walk-on in the last five minutes of the last spring football practice, I would never have played college baseball. I would never have played Major League Baseball for 11 seasons.
“You never know,” he said, “when you are five minutes from your destiny.”