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Researching Reclassification
January 25, 2013
The MHSAA was the first state high school association in the U.S. to divide its member schools into enrollment groups for season-ending tournament play. Over the years, in one form or another, all other statewide associations have done the same; and in more recent years, some have tweaked their systems to facilitate practical considerations of tournament administration or to address demographic or political shifts among their memberships.
Two forces have combined to bring increased attention to the participation of public and nonpublic schools in the same tournaments:
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First, as state associations expanded the number of classifications to provide more opportunities for their schools to experience tournament success, the percentage of nonpublic schools winning those championships has increased. Nonpublic schools rarely won any championships at all before the expansion to multiple classifications and especially to the additional expansion in football classifications. Public schools are not winning fewer championships today than years ago; they are merely winning a lower percentage of the championships now provided.
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Second, as state governments have reduced funding to public schools, those schools have been forced to reduce support for their sports programs and more often make them pay-as-you-go, much like nonpublic schools have operated for years. As pay-for-play and fundraising have been popularized in public schools, their “marketing advantage” over nonpublic schools has been diminished.
Often overlooked by those who call for separate tournaments for public and nonpublic schools is the fact that the majority of nonpublic schools rarely have had any success in statewide tournaments, and some have never had any success at all. An occasional District championship and a rare Regional trophy is the reality of most MHSAA member schools, both public and nonpublic. This, and the fact that "multipliers" have addressed only nonpublic schools and not also select-enrollment public schools (magnet, charter, choice), explains why MHSAA study groups have rejected the use of an automatic enrollment multiplier for nonpublic schools which is now in use in about 10 states.
Two other states have recently implemented a system that places schools in a classification for larger schools after they achieve a certain level of tournament success in the classification in which they would normally be placed. Of course, critics of this type of system that address the “chronically successful” are quick to point out that this does nothing for the school which is successful in the largest classification and tends to “penalize” next year’s students for the success of the previous years’ teams. Would it be right to force Ithaca High School into a higher classification in football in 2013 because it captured MHSAA titles in 2010, 2011 and 2012? And what would be done with Detroit Cass Technical after back-to-back titles in Division 1 of the Football Playoffs?
About these topics nationwide, there is much talk, some action, and no consensus.
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Girls, Boys and Concussions
September 13, 2016
On Monday the Michigan High School Athletic Association announced the major findings from the first year that member high schools were required to report all suspected concussions in the practices and competitions conducted in the 28 sports served by the MHSAA.
It surprises no one that 11-player and 8-player football ranked first and third, with 49 and 34 head injuries per thousand participants, respectively.
And while I’m told it’s not surprising to the experts that girls report more head injuries than boys, it is stunning to me how very many more head injuries are reported for girls than boys.
In sports with identical playing rules, girls reported head injuries with approximately twice the frequency that boys did.
In soccer, girls reported 30 head injuries per 1,000 participants, compared to 18 per 1,000 for boys.
In basketball, girls reported 29 head injuries per 1,000 participants, compared to only 11 per 1,000 for boys.
Girls reported concussions at the rate of 11 per 1,000 participants in softball, while boys reported just 4 per 1,000 in baseball.
Only a small percentage of either girls or boys were cleared by licensed medical personnel to return to activity in less than six days, and more than half were withheld between six and 15 days in soccer and basketball. The data suggests that clearance for girls to be returned to activity was slightly more gradual than it was for boys.
Researchers and reporters may find dozens of other observations and curiosities from the summary of 4,452 confirmed head injury reports submitted by the MHSAA’s 755 member high schools for MHSAA-supported sports in 2015-16; but what has the MHSAA’s attention is this giant gender difference.
Is this gender difference accurate, and if so, what are the physiological factors involved that make it so?
Is there a tendency for over-reporting by females, or under-reporting by males, and if so, what are the social and/or psychological factors that may cause this?
Regardless, what does this mean for how coaches work with boys and girls; and what does that mean for how we prepare coaches through the MHSAA Coaches Advancement Program?
The MHSAA will take to an even deeper level its nearly 30-year partnership with the Institute for the Study of Youth Sports at Michigan State University to explore the issues related to coaches education that have emerged as a result of the first year of mandated concussion reporting for Michigan high schools.
The 2015-16 school year was only a start; it identified some initial themes. The more important value will be realized after the 2016-17 school year, and subsequent school years, when year-over-year comparisons will be made and trends will become apparent that will demand action to further promote the welfare of participants in school-sponsored sports.