Nonfaculty Coaches
June 18, 2012
Since the so-called heyday of school sports in the 1950s, when you could count on more talk in a community about its few high school teams than about all the college and professional sports teams in the country combined, some things have improved – diversity and safety, for example; but some things have not met the high ideals hoped for in educational athletics.
During the explosive growth period of school sports in the 1970s and 1980s, when girls programs were introduced or reintroduced to schools and well-established community programs were added to the school sports curriculum, schools in almost every state had to backpedal from the ideal that only trained educators – certified teachers – could coach interscholastic athletic teams. (In Michigan, except for two years in the mid 1950s when certified teachers were required, the rules only urge that coaches be certified teachers.)
While the number of sports and levels of teams have greatly expanded these past five or six decades, the coaching pool within the faculty of a school district has not. Furthermore, teachers’ salaries improved so much that coaching stipends became less necessary to supplement teachers’ incomes, so teachers “volunteered” less readily to serve as coaches for a second and third sport.
Moreover, the coaching demands for one sport increased out of season, interfering with a person’s availability to help coach second and third sports during the school year. This was commonplace in the sports that moved from the community into schools, but the out of season demands have increased significantly for traditional school sports as well.
There is irony that community youth sports programs not only have provided school districts with a pool of informed and interested people to serve as coaches, but they have also increased the demands on coaches so much out of season that coaches must specialize in a single sport and therefore are less available to assist with the many different sports and levels of teams that school districts struggle to provide students.
It is estimated now that more than half of all high school coaches do not work in the school building where they coach, which can create communications challenges for schools. A smaller but growing number of high school coaches do not work at all in the field of education, which can create philosophical problems as well. Not always, of course; in fact, many nonfaculty coaches are a rich and increasingly indispensible blessing for school sports.
Taking Our Half in the Middle
September 22, 2015
When there is a rule that is as frequently criticized for being too weak as for being too harsh, it’s likely the rule is just about right.
For every administrator and coach who complains that the transfer rule misses a situation where there is no question the student transferred for sports participation, there are as many administrators and coaches – and many times more parents – who plead for leniency under the transfer rule.
For every congested community in Michigan that offers students multiple school options, and some of those who participate in interscholastic athletics shop for the situation that best fits their needs or desires, there are many more communities in Michigan where few options exist, and transfers by student-athletes are both low in number and logical in nature.
For every call for a mandatory year-long, no-exceptions period of ineligibility to penalize athletic-motivated transfers, there are dozens of transfers by low-level, low-profile student athletes who do not deserve such draconian consequences.
For every statewide high school association in the U.S. that has a tougher transfer rule than Michigan, there are as many that have a weaker transfer rule; or, they have no rule at all because the state’s legislature intervened, usurped the association’s authority and overturned its over-reaching regulation.
The MHSAA transfer rule is not perfect and likely never will be, which is why it is among the two most reviewed and revised rules of the MHSAA Handbook. But the MHSAA transfer rule is on the right path. A dramatic detour will serve school sports badly.
What most negatively affects the administration of the existing transfer rule is the reluctance of administrators and coaches to report directly the violations they observe personally. If these people won’t do their part, they have no right to critique the rule or to criticize the rule makers.