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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.

Attitude Adjustment

June 3, 2014

One of the privileges of my job is the opportunity to speak at uplifting season-ending or year-ending events of MHSAA member schools. No matter how busy or burdensome the day has been, these evening assignments always improve my attitude. They sharpen my vision of the core values of school sports and deepen my commitment to the cause of educational athletics.
This was the case when I accepted a last-minute invitation to address senior athletes, parents and staff on a Monday evening in May at a Class A school near Lake Michigan. I was there to address this audience; but the best part of the evening for me was to hear administrators, coaches and boosters talk about student-athletes and observe parents soaking up the moments and messages.
This school gave special recognition to three seniors who participated in all 12 seasons of their high school experience. The school honored 49 students who had earned four or more high school letters, including 22 who had earned six or more. Clearly, there is an important place for the multi-sport student at this school, and this school places a high value on the multi-sport experience.
Twelve students (ten girls and two boys) will be receiving some type of financial aid to college with the expectation that they will play intercollegiate athletics, but only one of those is to a Division I university; and that’s for women’s track & field. She’s the school’s record holder in both the shot put and discus, but she looks more like a ballerina.
That’s part of the joy of these events . . . seeing the different ways our high school student-athletes are packaged. I always smile when, for example, the 112-pound wrestler, six-foot volleyball player and rail-thin golfer are called up to receive the same award; and I’m always charmed when a coach calls his petite softball player a “bulldog.”
My commitment to providing a diverse, values-driven athletic program in a school setting – with opportunities for the tall, short, slender and stout – has never been greater, encouraged once again by sharing an evening with those who are the heart and soul of school sports.