People Serving People
September 14, 2012
It is at this time each year, especially, that I’m made more aware of the harm and heartache that exists in our students’ homes, if they are lucky enough to have a home.
Every day our staff receives dozens of calls about the terrible circumstances children are in because of dysfunctional home life, medical issues or myriad other upsetting situations; and every day MHSAA Associate Director Tom Rashid is preparing for Executive Committee consideration more requests from schools to waive eligibility rules for their students whose circumstances do not fit a transfer exception or are not compliant with other regulations.
During the 2011-12 school year there were 506 requests for waiver submitted to the Executive Committee, compared to 462 the year before. The record is 524 in 2007-08.
By far, there are more requests to waive the transfer regulation than any other: 352 in 2011-12 compared to 320 the year before. The record is 372 in 2007-08.
There are so many requests for waiver today that the Executive Committee exceeds the MHSAA Constitution that requires a minimum of three meetings each year. The Executive Committee has scheduled 12 meetings during each year for the past half dozen years.
And the Executive Committee front loads the calendar, this year with three meetings over five weeks at the start of the school year (Aug. 8, Aug. 28 and Sept. 11) so that the large number of situations that arise at the beginning of the new school year can be addressed before too much of fall season competition has occurred.
Last school year the MHSAA Executive Committee approved 352 of the 506 requests for waiver, including 265 of the 352 requests to waive the transfer regulation. The five-member committee of school administrators serves without monetary compensation, but with a commitment to treat schools and students as fairly and consistently as humanly possible. They are compassionate, caring people making difficult decisions.
Time for Tough Topics
February 28, 2014
The daily deluge of calls and emails about issues that matter that day tempt us to take our eye off other issues that matter today, tomorrow and for many years. Good service requires that we respond promptly and pleasantly to the daily details, but good leadership requires that we give adequate attention to matters more fundamental to the mission of school-sponsored sports, and more critical to the future of educational athletics.
No matter how many times we’re contacted about today’s programs and problems, we must create our own time to dive deeply into the core philosophies and cornerstone policies of voluntary competitive interscholastic athletics.
We have attempted to do this with the “Four Thrusts for Four Years” campaign to address health and safety issues, especially but far from exclusively focusing on increased acclimatization and decreased head-to-head contact in football practices. The practice proposals of the 2013 Football Task Force – developed over a series of meetings by serious people, appear to have widespread support and should receive an affirmative vote by the Representative Council next month.
Similarly, we have appointed a task force to work throughout 2014 on junior high/middle school issues. Theirs is the difficult challenge of locating the sweet spot – the policies that protect the multi-sport experience in a learning environment for our younger students while still providing more competition, and for younger grades, to attract and hold the interest of junior high/middle school students and their parents who are seeking much more competition much earlier in life than the MHSAA’s current policies allow.
Out-of-season contact by high school coaches with their high school students is another of the topics that is often discussed and occasionally studied, and the rules governing out-of-season coaching are frequently tweaked. The result is a mammoth section of the Handbook that is difficult to read and follow, and invites widespread disrespect. MHSAA staff is conducting a series of two-hour sessions to try to reframe the discussion and present to the membership by next fall a new (and briefer) set of rules and interpretations. The goal will be to respect both the guiding principles of educational athletics as well as society’s changes since the current rules were first developed.
That’s the goal for all of this these tough, timeless topics.