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Push Pause

May 2, 2017

For the past 15 months, the Michigan High School Athletic Association has focused more of its precious resources of time and money on these four priorities:

  • Define and Defend Educational Athletics

  • Promote Participant Health and Safety

  • Serve and Support Junior High/Middle School Programs

  • Recruit and Retain Contest Officials

These topics were brought into focus by making time for the MHSAA staff and Representative Council to pause from the frenetic pace of everyday duties to talk about constituents’ current needs and to think about the next big things that are just down the road and perhaps around a metaphorical corner.

It is time to ignore the tyranny of the urgent, push “pause,” and engage the MHSAA staff and Representative Council once again in a time of research into and reflection about the current and near-future needs and wants of the constituents they serve. This discussion could lead anywhere, but these topics will get things started:

  • What’s next for kids that could/should involve us – e.g., Robotics? E-Games? Water Polo? Girls Field Hockey? Boys Volleyball? Girls Flag Football? Road Racing? Snowboarding? Weightlifting?

  • What’s our role with respect to special programming for students with cognitive or physical disabilities?

  • If given a windfall, how would we best spend $50,000? $250,000? $500,000?

Counterpoint

February 13, 2018

There is a segment of those who are interested in public education who believe it is their privilege and responsibility to educate their children however and wherever they wish. Some parents believe they should be able to enroll their children anywhere, subsidized by taxpayers, and have immediate and full access to all the school’s programs and services.

This is a factor that helps to fuel transfers in school sports. But for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Watching on the sidelines and wringing their hands are the parents of those students who are displaced from positions and playing time on school sports teams by those who have dropped into their programs after moves from other schools ... moves necessitated not by changes in parents’ employment or other imperatives, but by parents’ changing attitudes about their local school sports team.

Transfer rules are designed in part to protect those who are not unhappy, who are not dissatisfied with a coach or playing time or the offensive system the team is using, or are willing to work through issues and learn from them. Transfer rules are designed for those who have put in their time within a program and are anticipating their opportunity to play.

Within every chorus singing “Let him or her play,” there are many others humming a different tune.