Staying Alive
June 9, 2015
It has been said by others more clever with a phrase than I am, “Travel has its dangers, but routine can be deadly.”
World travel is something I'm passionate about and it has added adventure and perspective that have enriched my existence; but I do not dare pontificate on how other people choose to live their personal lives. That's each person's personal business and none of mine.
However, at this stage in my career, I do feel comfortable suggesting that this travel metaphor is a healthy way to think about one's professional life, and a productive way to nurture the life of organizations. Many executives and their boards may get too comfortable with routine, emphasizing risk management more than innovation, reducing the chances of failure and criticism rather than seeking the adventure of new ways of thinking and acting that could lead to new ways of serving.
I say, with massive respect for the traditional core values of school sports, that fear of doing big, untested things – risky adventures – has caused school sports organizations to miss opportunities for so many years that they have become close to irrelevant in the youth sports experience of this country. We have failed to travel, or taken such safe trips that we are dying rather than thriving on behalf of students, their schools and our society.
For the past half-dozen years, and especially in 2015-16, the MHSAA is in a traveling mode. In doing so, we add some danger to our lives, but at least we stay alive. In fact, we may never, ever have been as vibrant as we are right now.
The Safe Play Game Plan
April 21, 2015
On Feb. 10, bills were introduced into both the United States Senate and United States House of Representatives, together called the “Safe Play Act,” which addresses three of the four health and safety “H’s” described in my last posting: Heat, Hearts and Heads.
For each of these topics, the federal legislation would mandate that the director of the Centers for Disease Control develop educational material and that each state disseminate that material.
For the heat and humidity management topic, the legislation states that schools will be required to adopt policies very much like the “MHSAA Model Policy to Manage Heat and Humidity” which the MHSAA adopted in March of 2013.
For both the heart and heat topics, schools will be required to have and to practice emergency action plans like we have been promoting in the past and will be distributing to schools this summer.
For the head section, the legislation would amend Title IX of the 1972 Education Amendments and would eliminate federal funding to states and to schools which fail to educate their constituents or fail to support students who are recovering from concussions. This support would require multi-disciplinary concussion management teams that would include medical personnel, parents and others to provide academic accommodations for students recovering from concussions that are similar to the accommodations that are already required of schools for students with disabilities or handicaps.
This legislation would require return-to-play protocols similar to what we have in Michigan, and the legislation would also require reporting and record-keeping that is beyond what occurs in most places.
This proposed federal legislation demonstrates two things. First, that we have been on target in Michigan with our four Hs – it’s like they read our playbook of priorities before drafting this federal legislation.
This proposed federal legislation also demonstrates that we still have some work to do.