Our Job
January 29, 2013
When I’m asked to describe the MHSAA’s job in a three-second sound bite, I say: “Our job is to protect and promote educational athletics.”
Give me three seconds longer and I’ll say: “Our job is to protect and promote the values and value of student-centered, school-sponsored sports.”
Give me three seconds longer and I’ll add “. . . by raising standards for, and increasing participation in, educational athletics.”
And give me time to complete the thought and I’ll add that we do this through:
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training for coaches, officials and athletic directors;
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tournaments that keep sportsmanship levels high and both expenses and health risks low; and
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telling the story to these groups: students and parents, school personnel, and the media and public.
We provide training and tournaments, and we tell the story of school-based sports.
That’s the job. And it’s how we judge the “good idea du jour” that bombards our office. We can’t do everything. To do so would not be doing our job well.
The Meaning of Success
December 8, 2015
All of the MHSAA’s fall season tournaments have ended. A small sliver of our hundreds of member school teams are clutching championship trophies.
Thankfully, those few trophies do not define success.
Some teams won their first ever MHSAA Regional title this fall, and a few more won their first MHSAA District championship ... and those go down in their local lore as the most successful teams in those schools’ histories. Deservedly so.
But even those situations do not define success adequately.
Some teams had their first winning record in many years. Some teams didn’t accomplish that goal but won twice as many games as the year before; and they rightfully claimed their seasons a success.
Some teams lost almost every game but kept pulling together without back-biting or complaining. And that too is success.
I once told a team of T-ballers I was coaching that they had a perfect record: six wins and six losses. Six times they had to deal with victories; six times they had to deal with losses. That’s also a good definition of success.
And finally ... singer/songwriter Sam Baker has written this lyric about his aspirations to play professional ice hockey: “I failed well; and that made all the difference.”