One Thing
March 11, 2016
One of Michigan’s finest athletic directors is Plainwell’s Dave Price, who recently encouraged me with a school newspaper article about a student who epitomizes school sports, Plainwell High School senior Jessica Nyberg. She participates for the Trojans in swimming & diving, basketball and soccer.
Trojan Torch staff writer Jordan Raglon featured Jessica in an article on Feb. 17, citing how much teammates and coaches value her companionship and leadership. The author cited her accomplishments in all three sports, but what caught my attention was this statement by Jessica: “If there was one thing sports has taught me, it’s that everyone matters.”
I can’t think of a better theme for school sports, or a better mission for educational athletics.
At its best, school sports teaches that teamwork works. That substitutes who practice with peak performance push the starters to even higher levels of performance, and turn some starters into stars.
At its best, school sports finds room for every student, regardless of ability or disability, to be a part of the team so long as the student meets the standards of eligibility, decorum, discipline and dedication the school and team demand.
At its best, school sports understands that “everyone matters” means that no student is above the rules, and that failure to apply rules to one student devalues other students who have complied with the rules.
With the attitude that “everyone matters,” teams tend to come together, discrimination tends to end, and fair play advances.
By The Book
January 16, 2018
The Michigan High School Athletic Association is unfairly criticized by the uninformed for inconsistently administering the Transfer Rule.
That some students are eligible and others not after a change of school enrollment is the result of 15 stated and necessary exceptions within the Transfer Rule that can cause some students to be immediately eligible while others have to wait about one semester before they become eligible to participate for their new school. The rule, as written, with 15 pretty cut-and-dried exceptions, is consistently applied.
Some students have their ineligibility extended from one semester to two because an athletic-motivated transfer was alleged by the student’s previous school and confirmed by the MHSAA, OR because one of the listed athletic-related links was found to be present by the MHSAA without any school needing to make a written allegation of an athletic-motivated transfer. Some students have their eligibility extended further – up to four years – because they transferred as a result of undue influence (athletic recruitment).
So, if you read that one student transferred without any loss of eligibility, and another transfer lost one semester of eligibility, and another lost two semesters of eligibility, and another student lost even more, it is a function of the specific rules involved and their application to the specific facts of the different students’ situations.
It’s not bias, but the book (the Handbook that all member schools adopted); it’s not favoritism but how the rule applies to the facts of each case.