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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.

Pay to Play

July 28, 2015

Our local newspaper recently reported that a group of 8-year-olds had qualified for a national 3-on-3 soccer tournament July 31 to Aug. 2 at a theme park resort in Florida; but the report said the team had to raise $5,000 for the privilege.
Without knowing it at the time, the players and coaches qualified on the basis of a second-place finish at a tournament last August in Hastings, Michigan. Really? Second place? Last year?
Let’s be frank. The basis for qualifying for this national event in Florida was not a runner-up finish in a tournament for 7-year-olds the previous summer in a small town in Michigan. The basis for qualifying was the ability to raise $5,000 so the resort could fill its hotel rooms and sell tickets to its theme parks.
National tournament? Baloney. If you can pay, then you can play. Sell this as an expensive family trip, perhaps; but as a national tournament, it has zero integrity.
This kind of hype and hypocrisy adds to the challenges of administering sane and sensible school sports. Neither 8- nor 18-year-olds need national tournaments. There’s a lot more bang for the buck in our own backyards.