Soccer for Schools
January 22, 2016
International soccer has provided me the greatest experience I’ve ever had as a sports spectator. Watching the Boca Juniors come back to win 2-1 in overtime in their historic stadium in Buenos Aires in November 2013 provided me an almost out-of-body experience as the home team fans, decked out in blue and yellow and waving flags, sang their way through the lows and dramatic highs of this match.
Soccer has been called “the beautiful game.” But of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder; and not all sports fans see beauty in a game that, at its highest levels, has so little scoring and so much flopping, and only one person knows how much time remains in the game. And of course, the sport has been supervised at the highest levels by individuals so corrupt that they make the recent scandals of this nation’s Amateur Athletic Union leadership seem like child’s play.
Soccer is a global game, and we – at the high school level – are not going to change the game at its highest level in the U.S. I don’t really care. I just want a more appropriate game for the interscholastic level.
We already have altered the global game’s substitution rules for the interscholastic level to promote greater participation and player safety. And we use a scoreboard that lets teams and spectators know how much time remains in each half.
To promote more safety, we could implement a football style practice policy that limits the number of practices when heading the ball can occur to one per day during the preseason and to two per week during the regular season.
To promote more scoring, we could implement a basketball style “over-and-back” rule at the midfield line, and also by prohibiting defenders from playing the ball to their own goalkeepers.
The beautiful game has imperfections – at least for our purposes – which we have corrected for our needs in the past and we can do more of in the future without challenging the global juggernaut that soccer has become.
The Western Way
September 29, 2015
When he was in elementary school, my younger son Luke often traveled with me on MHSAA business. Today, Luke is living in Shanghai, China, where he is the principal of an elementary school for Chinese children.
The parents of these Chinese children want their youngster (it’s usually an only child) educated in the western way so the child can get into a western high school and college.
Those parents want their children speaking English. But much more than that, they want their children thinking critically and creatively. And they want their children engaging in extracurricular programs that teach teamwork and leadership.
Those parents want the kind of schools we operate in Michigan. They want the kind of programs we offer here.
We educate the whole child; and the whole world wants what we do.
Not only that – unlike most of the rest of the world, we not only educate the whole child, we educate every child. Most other countries don’t even try.