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Preserving A Place

September 18, 2012

Nearly 20 years ago I spoke with a parents group at an elementary school.  Most in attendance were parents of elementary students.  Most were moms.

During our discussion, the mothers pleaded with me – that’s not too strong a word – to help develop policies that would preserve a place on high school teams for their children.  “Just a jersey,” one mom said.  “Just a spot on the team.”

These parents were almost sick with worry that if their sons and daughters did not play one sport year-round, starting now, they wouldn’t make the team in high school. And they believed that not making the team would doom their children to absenteeism, drug use, pregnancy, and every evil known to youth.

They saw the high school program becoming a program for only elite athletes, only the specialists, with no room for their kids who would meet the standards of eligibility but lack the necessary athletic experience to make the team because they didn’t belong to a private club, go to all the right camps, or make a certain travel team in the third grade.

Did these parents overstate the problem?  Yes.  But there’s some validity in their worries.

Those moms gave me a goal, and later my own sons personalized that goal:  to work for that generation of high school students and the next to preserve a place in our programs for all students, regardless of athletic ability, who meet all the essential standards of eligibility, want to participate in more than one school sport and activity and embody the spirit of being a student first in educational athletics.

Seeking Serious Solutions

April 13, 2018

Too much time is being spent on season-ending tournaments, and too little time on the regular season, and practice, and making sports heathier, and promoting student engagement, and the role of sports in schools.

There are exceptions, of course.

  • The Michigan High School Athletic Association Soccer Committee is a rarity, expressing that there may be too much competition and not enough practice and rest in school-based soccer.

  • The MHSAA Competitive Cheer Committee is constantly looking for the right balance of athleticism and safety – a blend that will challenge the best and grow the sport among the rest.

  • The MHSAA Junior High/Middle School Committee is tackling large, tough topics and beginning to make culture-changing proposals to carry the brand of school sports to younger students.

These are examples of the conversations of which all school-based sports leaders must have much more.

Because our standing committees have often failed us and spent too much time on matters of too little consequence, the MHSAA has often resorted to special task forces or work groups to help get necessary things done.

  • This is how Michigan got ahead of the curve on the length of football practices and the amount of contact. A task force was appointed when the football coaches association and the MHSAA Football Committee were ineffective.

  • Years ago, it wasn’t a standing committee but a work group that brought us the eligibility advancement provision for overage 8th-graders.

  • That’s how cooperative programs came to our state.

  • That’s how we got coaches education started, and it’s how we extended coaches education to apply to more coaches on more topics.

  • This is how we are making progress now – a Task Force on Multi-Sport Participation, and a Work Group on the Transfer Rule.

We need more of this – small groups diving deeply into topics over multiple meetings. Educational athletics has significant problems that require serious solutions, and new strategies for seeking those solutions.