Silence is Golden
July 2, 2013
During the summer weeks, "From the Director" will bring to you some of our favorite entries from previous years. Today's blog first appeared Oct. 22, 2010.
A minor repair to a vocal cord forced me into 48 hours of silence recently. I rather enjoyed it and, frankly, was a little sorry to see it end.
You see, when you can’t talk, you’re forced to listen; and when you can’t talk, you’re more inclined to think. Not “think before you speak,” just think.
I’ll spare you the time spent counting my many blessings, as well as the time worrying about a few family matters. But I’ll share with you some thoughts I had about our common ground, that is, school-sponsored sports in Michigan.
I believe the future of school sports hangs in the balance of how we respond to the financial pressures local programs now experience. It worries me that too many responses are putting local programs on a course that will fundamentally and forever knock school sports off the course of educational athletics.
- We are mistaken if we believe a $225 participation fee to play JV tennis doesn’t change the nature of JV tennis.
- We are mistaken if we believe that a competitive athletic program, with high emotion and risk of injury, can be administered by inexperienced or part-time athletic administrators without clerical and event supervision assistance.
- We are mistaken if we believe that we can operate educational athletics without our coaches involved in ongoing education regarding the best practices of working with adolescents.
It isn’t educational athletics if the program does not promote broad and deep participation and does not have expert leadership and coaching.
That is what I thought about. And what I intend to speak about.
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.