Soccer’s Shifting Sands
November 27, 2012
US Soccer has created “Development Academies” for high school age soccer players that prohibit those players from competing on their high school teams. This has created a nationwide gnashing of teeth to which I contributed in this space on March 9, 2012 – “US Soccer Gets a Red Card.”
It now appears that the effects of US Soccer’s exclusionary policy have been felt in Michigan, as a new cast of characters played leading roles in the MHSAA’s recently completed Lower Peninsula Boys Soccer Tournament and the Michigan High School Soccer Coaches Association’s team rankings tilted from the southeast, home of the state’s two US Soccer Development Academy programs, and toward the west and north.
Divisions 1, 2 and 3 of the MHSAA boys tournament lacked a southeast team in the Finals; and the soccer coaches association did not rank a southeast team in the top two of Divisions 1 and 4, in the top four of Division 3, and in the top eight of Division 2.
Certainly, one year's results is not a trend; there could be other factors at play here. And it’s also true that some folks are not alarmed, saying any student lost to the US Soccer Development Academy opens up a spot for another student to play for his high school team.
Perhaps that’s so. Still, it is disconcerting that US Soccer now plans to descend to an even younger level of athlete for its boys development academy and to start a similar program for girls soccer.
Marriage Reflections
October 18, 2013
Recently, and for the first time, I drew parallels between marriage and the hiring of staff. It occurred when a gray-haired, ponytailed officiant in the Phoenix foothills exhorted the wedding couple to be “the mirror of their partner’s best values.”
We want our newest staff person to be everything we need and want, immediately filling every hole and completing our wish list. Frankly, that’s impossible.
But, the one thing I am sure we must have and can have is a person who mirrors the MHSAA’s best values – an individual who reflects the core values of school-sponsored, student-centered sports and of the MHSAA on its best days as it serves and supports educational athletics.
And just as it’s not lethally late for a husband in his fifth decade of marriage to work harder to reflect his wife’s best values, neither is it too tardy for veterans of the MHSAA staff to focus on our reflection of the best values of school sports and the organization that has served educational athletics for ten decades.