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.
Balancing Football Playoffs
April 18, 2017
Every time the Michigan High School Athletic Association Football Playoffs have been expanded, two voices have been heard – one complaining that too many teams or divisions have watered down the tournament; the other advocating that every school should qualify for the tournament regardless of its regular-season performance.
The playoffs have expanded from 32 to 64 to 128 to 256 to 272 teams; and for 2017, with the addition of 16 more 8-player teams, to 288 of the 626 MHSAA member schools’ football teams in Michigan.
We have reached the point where 46 percent of the schools which sponsor football qualify for the Football Playoffs, and we are approaching closely the point of qualifying every team with winning records during the regular season.
Those stats sound about right for a collision sport conducted mostly outdoors in a cold climate for teenagers. A longer tournament is unwise; a larger tournament is unneeded.
What is needed and wise is more attention to the regular season, and especially to practices which occur at least five times more frequently than games. That’s where the teaching and learning of football skills and life lessons can be everyday occurrences for every team in Michigan.