Logo
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.
 

A Change Narrative

October 13, 2017

Here are five points to describe the essence of possible changes being processed by the Michigan High School Athletic Association for its transfer rule.

  1. We would move from a rule designed years ago for three-sport athletes to a rule that’s equally effective for regulating single-sport athletes.

  2. We would be treating all sports the same, regardless of season – fall, winter, spring. No longer would the transfer rule have a greater impact on winter sport athletes than fall or spring sport athletes.

  3. We would be getting out of the way of more “school of choice” parents who want to move a child from one school to another. If the student has not played a particular high school sport before, then eligibility is immediate in that sport ... at any level, and without any MHSAA Executive Committee action.

  4. We would be causing students who have played a high school sport (and their parents) to pause before they transfer. They would miss the next season in that sport unless one of the 15 stated exceptions to the transfer rule applies. (There is significant sentiment that this apply only to students who have played previously at the varsity level – i.e., if the student has participated previously only at the subvarsity level in a sport, that student could transfer and remain eligible at the subvarsity level; but this would be allowed one time only.)

  5. We would make it even tougher on students (and their parents) to circumvent the athletic-motivated and athletic-related transfer rules by eliminating the automatic residency exception in those special cases. (This is the most hotly debated of the changes being considered.)

The theme is “get out of the way of the benign transfers and get still tougher on the really bad ones.”