School Sports’ Influence
June 20, 2017
As I sat a year ago in an audience consisting of my colleagues from across the U.S., I shared the general frustration – or perhaps it was exhaustion – when a veteran member of our national sports medicine advisory committee discussed the role of high school sports leaders in addressing what he said posed the greatest threat to students.
That threat was nothing we had been working on so very hard for so very long. It wasn’t heads, heat or hearts. Not extreme weight loss in wrestling or, increasingly, in other sports. Not communicable diseases, especially in wrestling. It wasn’t specialization. Not performance enhancing drugs.
He reported that the greatest threat is accidents. Away from the practice and competition venues, and especially traffic accidents. He wondered what our role should be.
He acknowledged much we’ve done regarding so many issues in the past, and all the newer issues – such as opioid addiction, depression and suicide – that are pressing for our attention; but he said it was the same issue today that it has been for decades that most threatens students. Accidents. Especially automobile accidents.
He admitted that the time and place of this threat was not under the control of athletic coaches and administrators. But his point was that the time and place is still under the influence of coaches and administrators.
Say all you want that school sports is irrelevant in this age of video games and ubiquitous non-school sports. This physician knows the score. He knows that school sports still matters mightily to kids, and that those in charge of local school sports programs still yield great power over young people.
Pick a problem – almost any problem – and people want school sports to address it. From bullying to bulimia, from obesity to overuse injuries. It is unfair to ask us to do all this, especially when funding for school sports is considered a frill in so many places.
But it’s a heck of an honor to work in an area where people think we’re the solution, or at least a deterrent. So we keep trying.
Imperfect Patriots
July 12, 2017
Perhaps the most loyal thing a patriot can do for his or her country is to point out its flaws.
Even before this country’s Independence Day, people were at work to form a union that was imperfect at its start and remains so today. Some of its many flaws have been corrected, even as new flaws have been revealed.
We have imperfect patriots to thank for forming this nation and for helping this nation improve itself. Flawed people of conscience and courage have helped a young nation see itself as it was and also as it could become.
Some patriots have been famous, a few infamous, but most unrecorded in any historical account as they lived and labored in ways that improved their local community and, unknowingly, contributed to change they might not have imagined possible, improving everything from race relations to recycling to renewable energy.
This nation’s patriots are not merely those who lived at the birth of this nation. Every generation has had patriots who have been as important for nation-building as those in the 1700s. Patriots are found in and out of government. In homes and places of worship. They are found in the for-profit business world and in nonprofit organizations.
When, out of sincere loyalty, a person brings constructive criticism to a cause, that person helps to build and better the enterprise. It is as true of this imperfect organization as it is of our nation.