A Service Ace
October 18, 2011
I don’t write much about high school tennis, but I probably should.
It’s a terrific “lifetime” sport. It’s a sport we can play into our “golden years;” and, without officials to make the calls, it also has the potential to teach lifetime values.
But no sport we administer gives us more headaches. Too often we encounter overly-involved parents and under-involved school administrators; and we’re not certain if one doesn’t cause the other.
It’s a sport that brings chronic complaints of coaches “stacking” lineups. So serious have the allegations been for so long that the MHSAA actually convened a group and hired a professional facilitator to try to resolve some of the problems, without much success.
It’s a sport that devotes hundreds of hours to seeding; and while the seeds almost always hold up, criticism flies fast and furious for several days each fall and spring following the boys and girls seeding committee meetings.
We are fortunate that the MHSAA’s administrator for tennis, Gina Mazzolini, has the perspective that, in spite of everything, it’s really only a small percentage of people involved who create the majority of problems. It is, in fact, according to Gina, a fine educational experience for the vast majority of students involved.
This “big picture” perspective that Gina exhibits is what allows administrators at the local and statewide levels to remain passionate about their service no matter how prominent or persistent the problems seem.
Adult Errors
February 26, 2016
Every month, the MHSAA Executive Committee considers requests to waive eligibility rules for students. In very many cases, the student has become ineligible largely as a result of actions by others, most often a transient, broken or otherwise dysfunctional domestic environment.
While the Executive Committee starts the consideration of every case with a bias toward helping the student, the Executive Committee does not accept as a blanket excuse, “It wasn’t the student’s fault.” That alone will not win a waiver for the student.
When schools utilize an ineligible player in competition, resulting in forfeiture of the contest, it is almost always an inadvertent violation, often an administrative oversight. Once again, there is an inclination for people to appeal the required forfeit because, “It wasn’t the kids’ fault.”
Every third year or so, a school team will participate in more than the maximum number of contests or days of competition permitted during the regular season, and lose its MHSAA postseason participation privileges in that sport. Again, this is almost always an administrative misunderstanding ... “an adult’s error which shouldn’t penalize the team.” Again, “It wasn’t the kids’ fault.”
If every rule was unenforceable when it was an adult’s error, not a student’s fault, there would be few enforceable rules in school sports, and increasing disregard for rules. It has been encouraging to have so many people contact the MHSAA office in support of that message.