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Pay to Play

July 28, 2015

Our local newspaper recently reported that a group of 8-year-olds had qualified for a national 3-on-3 soccer tournament July 31 to Aug. 2 at a theme park resort in Florida; but the report said the team had to raise $5,000 for the privilege.
Without knowing it at the time, the players and coaches qualified on the basis of a second-place finish at a tournament last August in Hastings, Michigan. Really? Second place? Last year?
Let’s be frank. The basis for qualifying for this national event in Florida was not a runner-up finish in a tournament for 7-year-olds the previous summer in a small town in Michigan. The basis for qualifying was the ability to raise $5,000 so the resort could fill its hotel rooms and sell tickets to its theme parks.
National tournament? Baloney. If you can pay, then you can play. Sell this as an expensive family trip, perhaps; but as a national tournament, it has zero integrity.
This kind of hype and hypocrisy adds to the challenges of administering sane and sensible school sports. Neither 8- nor 18-year-olds need national tournaments. There’s a lot more bang for the buck in our own backyards.

Culture of Excellence

October 20, 2015

What are the marks of excellence in a high school’s extracurricular activities program that set the most welcoming schools apart? What are they doing to create and perpetuate a culture of excellence in good behavior?

Our counterpart organization in the state of Washington invited the MHSAA and other state high school associations to consider these questions, and to offer examples which would help to recognize the best practices of schools that have a tradition of excellence in good behavior and a welcoming environment.

We discovered that our initial thoughts were like skipping stones on a pond. They barely skimmed the surface of this topic, and we quickly plunged more deeply than answers like comfortable venues, convenient parking, friendly signage, staff assigned to greet contest officials and visiting teams, and upbeat cheering sections.

We concluded that all of these welcoming attributes are the result of committed leadership that communicates clearly and consistently about the expectations of educational athletics, and these expectations are exceptional in how different they are than at every other level of sports.

What is abundant in these schools and scarce in less-welcoming schools is the appointment, and continued training and support, of a full-time athletic administrator who spends all day, every day on the interscholastic program.

And this athletic administrator provides ongoing training and support to coaches, as well as to team captains and other student leadership.

These are the schools where the MHSAA Coaches Advancement Program is provided time and time again to coaches. These are the schools where students have attended the MHSAA’s Team Captains Clinics, Sportsmanship Summits and Women in Sports Leadership Conferences. This is where the School Broadcast Program is providing events regularly and promoting the school proudly.

Simply put, these are schools where administrators are dedicated to creating a proper perspective of school-sponsored, student-centered sports, and spend time on this daily. They have gone beyond signs and slogans to the much more difficult (but more rewarding) work of nurturing better leaders out of coaches and athletes, individual by individual, week after week, season after season.