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Simons Says

December 12, 2014

As an almost inveterate traveler – one who begins planning his next adventure to sweeten the sadness during the return trip of the current adventure – I took special note of and pleasure in this statement of Eric Simons in his book Darwin Slept Here:
“Optimism may be one of the biggest benefits of travel. When you spend all your time in a small area, trekking back and forth to work, getting all your news on the Internet, it’s easy to think the world is a lot worse off than it is. Then you get out in it, even for a short bit, and you get a summit view or find a friendly person who cares about nature just like you do, and then even when you go home, you remember: Hey, it’s not all bad. We’re really doing ok.”
When I see advertisements that promote travel as an escape, I cannot agree. For me, travel is a change from the daily routine, but it’s hardly an escape. In fact, I see more sights, hear more sounds, smell more scents and taste more flavors when I travel. I interact with countless more people – in airports, markets, parks, museums. But even moments of isolation – perhaps on a remote beach or trail – are somehow richer, more contemplative, when traveling.
It is not escape but engagement with new cultures and customs that travel causes; and it creates opportunities for personal reflection that routine obscures.
As Simons says, “Traveling connects us to the world and renews our capacity to wonder.”

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.