Logo

Shared Leadership

February 3, 2012

My introduction to high school athletic associations began when I was eight years old, when my father became the chief executive of the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association.  I learned about the work around the dinner table, by tagging along to Dad’s office, and by attending tournaments or accompanying him to banquets where he spoke.

My understanding of high school athletic associations broadened and deepened during the nearly eight years I served on the staff of the National Federation of State High School Associations.

So, even before I began my tenure as the MHSAA’s executive director, the essence of the work was in my bones.

In my father’s time and during my early years here in Michigan, the leadership model of a high school athletic association office was top down.  The chief executive generated or personally reviewed every piece of correspondence, and staff referred every important decision to the boss.

That leadership model is no longer practical, or even possible.  Too much is happening on so many different fronts for the chief executive-oriented model to do anything other than slow progress and frustrate people (both within and outside the office).

For today and the foreseeable future, the leadership model must be flat and diversified.  The chief executive must allow staff to gain expertise in a growing array of complicated topics and empower staff to execute freely.  It is impossible for a single person to gain the knowledge or have the time to lead a progressive, service-oriented high school athletic association; and I’m blessed to have had an experienced and passionate MHSAA staff to share the leadership opportunities and responsibilities.

Internal Medicine

March 20, 2018

When I express concerns for the health of high school basketball, I’m not confusing our problems with the corruption of major college men’s basketball that is under investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Yes, there are some tentacles that reach us, and taint us; but the problems that plague us most are more basic and local.

The concerns I have for high school basketball are captured in scenes that play out much too often across the membership of the Michigan High School Athletic Association. For example:

  • Declining participation, with JV and varsity rosters too small to practice 5-on-5 at either level.

  • Increasing forfeits.

  • Ugly mismatches, with scores so lopsided that it is hard to imagine much teaching or learning can occur.

  • Starters transferring; reserves dropping out.

  • Confrontations between parents and coaches.

  • Faculty coaches becoming a vanishing breed.

These kinds of concerns do not flow from the top down – we can’t blame these issues on the NCAA and NBA. No, our more persistent and perplexing problems percolate up from the youth level.

Often the students who come to our programs have participated in youth sports programs for five to 10 years before they join a school team. They arrive with expectations that often differ from what is intended for school-based programs. They’ve been in a different environment; they have different expectations.

And much of what is coming with youth sports begins to infect school sports. 

There is no vaccination that will be 100 percent effective in immunizing us. There is no single solution that can quickly reverse these negative trends in school-based basketball and other school sports. The efforts must be systemic and long-term. And among the efforts that must be made are these

  • More attention to coaches education – every coach, every year – where the ethics of educational athletics and the meaning of success in school sports provide the core of the curriculum; and

  • More attention to junior high/middle schools – more opportunities for 6th- through 8th-graders to sample school sports and to savor an experience that puts team before individual and learning ahead of winning.