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Perspective

July 9, 2018

(This blog first appeared on MHSAA.com November 2, 2010)

Each summer I put together a list of all the problems we’re addressing and all the projects we know we’ll be working on through the MHSAA during the year ahead. It’s always a long list, and accomplishing just a few items would make any year a good year.

So, this requires that we try to decide between all that we might do and all that we must do. And here’s a reminder of one thing we must do.

When I ask school and community groups with whom I’m speaking about what they think the problems are in school sports, the most popular responses from these constituents are (1) too little funding, and (2) too many misdirected parents; or sometimes that order is reversed: over-involved parents and under-funded programs.

I like to caution people that in some situations, our students suffer from too little adult engagement in their lives and that, almost everywhere, interscholastic athletics benefit greatly from the time and energy parents and other adults volunteer to help local programs operate. But I get the point of what I’m hearing.

These and other responses I hear – serious as these cited problems can be – may merely be symptoms of the single, fundamental issue that’s at the heart of all the others. That’s perspective.

  • Too little money for schools and sports?

    • Perspective – spending money on less essential things.

  • Pressure-packed parents?

    • Perspective – people focusing on adults’ desires more than students’ needs.

  • Poor sportsmanship?

    • Perspective – forgetting or never learning the pure purpose of educational athletics.

  • Too much specialization?  Too much year-round competition?

    • Perspective again.

  • Too much talk of college athletic scholarships?

    • Perspective once again.

In essence, almost all issues arise from matters of perspective. At their root, almost all problems are problems of perspective.

What can we do about this?

I don’t have the perfect prescription; but one thing is certain: we can’t relegate this to an afterthought. We cannot hope to make time to address this problem each day; we must plan to make time for it each day.

We need to model a positive perspective. Point to it when we see it. Explain it. Reward it.

It can’t be left to others. We are the guardians of proper perspective. It’s Job 1.

Seeking Input on Seeding

November 21, 2017

Seeding is a part of some levels of some Michigan High School Athletic Association tournaments, but no part of any level of MHSAA tournaments for other sports. The decisions are made sport-by-sport and level-by-level after sufficient understanding of a specific plan and broad support. 

Seeding deals with logistics, not a fundamental value of educational athletics. It gets outsized attention for its importance, having nothing to do with the interactions that lead to learning and growing in interscholastic athletics. It’s another byproduct of the ever-increasing influence of the pervasively promoted and televised NCAA’s basketball tournaments over the past 25 years.

Michigan’s high school sport most engaged in the topic now is, in fact, basketball. Discussions and surveys have been conducted regarding seeding at MHSAA District tournaments.

We’ve learned this summer and fall that a majority of our local school athletic directors favor seeding and do not think it will make regular-season scheduling more difficult nor cause coaches to delay or diminish substituting during regular season games.

We’ve learned that a majority favor a system that maintains geographically determined District tournaments and merely separates the top two seeded teams in each District, and continues to use a blind draw to place other teams assigned to the District on the bracket.

We’ve learned that a majority favors having the best two teams determined primarily through objective criteria assessed by an MHSAA created or controlled ranking system.

We’ve learned that while the majority favors these moves toward District seeding, there are significant pockets of opposition to any seeding at all in MHSAA basketball tournaments. At two of six Athletic Director In-Service meetings and at two of seven Update meetings in September and October, large majorities in attendance opposed seeding of District basketball tournaments; and voters were nearly evenly split at several other meeting sites. 

The discernible pattern is that seeding loses support as one moves out of the more densely populated areas of Michigan. We need to better understand why this is so, and what’s behind these regional or demographic preferences; then have the Representative Council make a decision at its meeting in March or May; and get this topic decided one way or the other.  

There is so much else that is so much more important than seeding to the health of school-sponsored basketball that deserves the attention that seeding has been getting.