One Concussion Conclusion
August 25, 2017
After both the first and second years of collecting head injury reports from all Michigan High School Athletic Association member high schools for all practices and events in MHSAA sports, we cautioned people to refrain from making too many conclusions.
It’s too soon. We now have a baseline, but we will need several years before we can be certain that we’ve spotted trends or trouble spots.
Nevertheless, one observation screams out. Girls report two to three times the number of concussions that boys do. In basketball, soccer, and in softball compared to baseball, girls report two to three times as many concussions. That was true in year one; it remained true in year two.
It may be that girls sustain more concussions than boys, or that girls are more forthcoming in reporting than boys are, or both. In the past, researchers have published both conclusions.
In either case, it means we need to coach boys and girls differently, and we need to prepare coaches differently for boys and girls teams, as we are doing in the MHSAA Coaches Advancement Program.
Seeking Input on Seeding
November 21, 2017
Seeding is a part of some levels of some Michigan High School Athletic Association tournaments, but no part of any level of MHSAA tournaments for other sports. The decisions are made sport-by-sport and level-by-level after sufficient understanding of a specific plan and broad support.
Seeding deals with logistics, not a fundamental value of educational athletics. It gets outsized attention for its importance, having nothing to do with the interactions that lead to learning and growing in interscholastic athletics. It’s another byproduct of the ever-increasing influence of the pervasively promoted and televised NCAA’s basketball tournaments over the past 25 years.
Michigan’s high school sport most engaged in the topic now is, in fact, basketball. Discussions and surveys have been conducted regarding seeding at MHSAA District tournaments.
We’ve learned this summer and fall that a majority of our local school athletic directors favor seeding and do not think it will make regular-season scheduling more difficult nor cause coaches to delay or diminish substituting during regular season games.
We’ve learned that a majority favor a system that maintains geographically determined District tournaments and merely separates the top two seeded teams in each District, and continues to use a blind draw to place other teams assigned to the District on the bracket.
We’ve learned that a majority favors having the best two teams determined primarily through objective criteria assessed by an MHSAA created or controlled ranking system.
We’ve learned that while the majority favors these moves toward District seeding, there are significant pockets of opposition to any seeding at all in MHSAA basketball tournaments. At two of six Athletic Director In-Service meetings and at two of seven Update meetings in September and October, large majorities in attendance opposed seeding of District basketball tournaments; and voters were nearly evenly split at several other meeting sites.
The discernible pattern is that seeding loses support as one moves out of the more densely populated areas of Michigan. We need to better understand why this is so, and what’s behind these regional or demographic preferences; then have the Representative Council make a decision at its meeting in March or May; and get this topic decided one way or the other.
There is so much else that is so much more important than seeding to the health of school-sponsored basketball that deserves the attention that seeding has been getting.