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Student-Centered Programming

February 7, 2012

For most of the histories of most statewide athletic associations across the country, the association has been a third party.  That is, the association’s work was with adults - administrators, coaches and officials – who had more direct interaction with student-athletes.

That has been changing for most of these associations over the past two decades.

Today, MHSAA staff work directly with student-athletes through the Farm Bureau Scholar-Athlete program as well as at sportsmanship summits and captains clinics.  We partner with the Basketball Coaches Association of Michigan to conduct our “Reaching Higher” programs for college-bound male and female players.  We have a Student Advisory Council that works with us in our office, at meetings and at tournament venues.

After the Scholar-Athlete program, the oldest of our student-centered programming is the MHSAA Women in Sports Leadership Conference which began in 1989.  The 2012 Women in Sports Leadership Conference, which concluded yesterday, addressed a “Leaders Show Up” theme.  Three dozen presenters interacted with approximately 500 student attendees.

These direct interactions aid the modern athletic association in staying alert to the needs, desires and “idiosyncrasies” of students, who have always been the subject of the work – just less obviously and effectively than they are today.

Concussion Care Continuum

June 2, 2015

The concussion care continuum is of equal importance from start to finish, but some of the stops along the way are more in the MHSAA’s area of influence than others, so they are receiving more of our attention.
We would never say that removal-from-play decisions are more important than return-to-play decisions. However, because the removal decisions occur at school sports venues by school-appointed persons, while the latter are made at medical facilities by licensed medical personnel selected by students’ families, the MHSAA is giving the removal process more attention than the return.
This helps to explain why the MHSAA is orchestrating pilot programs where volunteering member schools will be testing systems during the 2015-16 school year that may assist sideline personnel at practices and contests when assessing if a concussion event has occurred and that player should be withheld from further activity that day. The buzz that these pilot programs is creating will increase everyone’s attention on improving sideline concussion management. For more information, click here.
The MHSAA has always believed it shared a role with local schools and health care facilities and professional organizations of coaches and school administrators in the education of coaches, athletes and parents. This remains our first and foremost focus on the concussion care continuum.
But the pilot programs, and more specific requirements beginning in 2015-16 to report head injury events, demonstrate that the MHSAA is moving further along the continuum to assist the entire concussion management team. As we do so, our focus is on all levels of all sports for both genders, grades 7 through 12, with attention to both practices and competition.