Risk Minimization Reaches More
May 9, 2014
Every season – fall, winter and spring – the MHSAA launches a series of sport-specific rules/risk management meetings, completion of which has been a requirement for high school varsity head coaches and MHSAA registered officials who want to coach or officiate in the MHSAA tournament for that sport. Two significant changes will occur for the 2014-15 school year.
For the first time in 2014-15, all assistant and subvarsity high school coaches must complete the same meeting requirement as the high school varsity head coach or, in the alternative, they must complete one of seven free online health and safety courses that are posted on MHSAA.com and designated to fulfill this requirement. High school athletic directors must certify each season, three times a year, that all their assistant and subvarsity coaches for that season have completed that requirement.
Also, for the first time in 2014-15, the MHSAA will be posting content for officials that differs from the content for coaches. While coaches are being given a review of select Handbook regulations, for example, officials will be reminded of key elements of effective officiating, regardless of the sport or level of competition.
These new policies are intended to bring more relevant content to a greater number of those who work with student-athletes and to further emphasize risk minimization in educational athletics.
In 2013-14, slightly more than 20,000 coaches and officials completed the MHSAA rules/risk management meeting requirement. The number will greatly exceed 100,000 in 2014-15.
Not Right for Us
March 7, 2017
The proposal to utilize KPI Rankings to seed the District and Regional rounds of the MHSAA Boys and Girls Basketball Tournaments should not be adopted by the Michigan High School Athletic Association.
This is no criticism of KPI Rankings per se, or of its creator who is assistant athletic director at Michigan State University; but it’s not the right thing to do for our statewide high school basketball tournaments.
The KPI rankings is one of a half-dozen means used by the NCAA to seed its Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament. But the proposal before us is that KPI rankings become the one and only system for seeding the MHSAA’s tournaments. There would be no other criteria and no human judgment.
The result would be seeding that misses important details, like which teams are hot and which are not at season end, and which teams have recently lost players to injuries or ineligibilities and which have had players return.
KPI ranks teams on a game-by-game basis by assigning a value to every game played. A loss to an opponent with a poor record is considered a “bad loss” and has a negative point value. A win over an opponent with a good record is considered a “good win” and earns a positive point value. Margin of victory is a factor.
This is a nice tool for the NCAA to use, along with a variety of other tools and considerations that its billion-dollar budget can accommodate, but none of which is proposed for seeding the MHSAA tournaments. KPI Rankings is not sufficient as the one-and-only seeding criterion for MHSAA tournaments.
Moreover, dependence on a seeding system owned by a single individual, who is outside the MHSAA office, and who has the potential to move from MSU to anywhere across the USA, is a poor business strategy.
If there is to be seeding, there are more appropriate ways to do it for the high school level. But first there needs to be clearer consensus that seeding is a good thing to do, philosophically and practically. In the MHSAA we do this sport by sport, and level by level. And the jury is still out for seeding in Michigan high school basketball.