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Second Half by MHSAA

Our Environment at Risk

October 18, 2011

My wife and I are passionate travelers.  We plan our own trips and we read about the history, music, art, government and food of the places we plan to visit.  I struggle to learn a few phrases to get by in other languages.

No matter how cramped airplanes have become and no matter how compromised we feel as we shed our belongings and submit to the frisking and fondling of airport security, we remain enthusiastic planners and pilgrims.  And the more exotic the destination, the more excited we are.

As we have traveled, it has been impossible to escape the realization that civilizations rise and fall; and it’s impossible to avoid the conclusion that one of the most compelling reasons why civilizations fail is that they ruin their environments.

Some civilizations have done this to themselves, poisoned their own environs; while other civilizations saw their environments contaminated by foreign influences.  Some were invaded by brute force; others peacefully introduced new customs or germs that weakened the people or their flora or fauna.

It is one or more of these influences that caused the Mayans, who built structures that still stun 21st century engineers, to be reduced from many millions to a few remnants.

The historical principle that civilizations collapse when their environments are contaminated is worth considering for our little niche in modern society:  the enterprise of school sports.

We cannot expect school sports to survive – these programs can only collapse – if we ruin the environment in which school sports breathes and lives.

This is an environment of comprehensive, community-based schools. 

But schools are losing both these characteristics – both their comprehensiveness and their community base.

That we have a few schools of narrow focus is reasonable; that we have a few schools of specialized populations is tolerable; that we have a few schools without strong neighborhood connection is acceptable. 

However, it does our neighborhoods no good, our communities no good, our state no good, nor our nation any good – in fact, in total, it does our nation much harm – as more and more schools trend further and further in these directions.

To abandon the school with comprehensive programs serving the invested neighborhood around it does us harm:  nation, state, community and child.

It is almost irrelevant that this is bad for high school athletics.  It’s bad for America.
 

No Easy Fix

February 13, 2015

“If we don’t fix this problem, even our friends and allies may turn against us.”
That was the dire warning one of the MHSAA staff members gave to the rest of us at a weekly staff meeting recently, during which this staff member was receiving emails from people appalled over the mid-season transfer of a basketball player from one school to another.
The “fix” that some people want is a rule that makes every transfer student ineligible for a full year, regardless of the reason for the change of schools or the circumstances of the student. Of course, that rule would never survive judicial scrutiny, and legislators in every corner of the state would be advocating change for the sake of one child or another.
A more moderate remedy is to utilize a rule that applies the full-year period of ineligibility to those students whose circumstances do not fit one of the already established 15 exceptions that make a student eligible without delay following a transfer. That half-measure would not stop many transfers that would still frustrate people, and it would snag many transfers that would continue to anger people.
The rules we already have in place are tools for schools to use to stop many of the transfers that frustrate without snaring those transfers that anger: the athletic-motivated transfer rule and especially the athletic-related transfer rule (or links law).
Before our friends and allies turn their backs on us, they need to turn in the transfer situations where the rules already apply, and the undue influence (recruiting) they can document. They need to give the system a chance to work to the full extent of its potential. We should not make tougher rules if schools fail to utilize the rules they already have.
Adopting rules is usually easy for the organization. Applying rules is often much harder for the schools.