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.
Controlling Authority
September 22, 2017
On occasion, someone who does not like a rule of sports applied to his or her child’s situation will suggest that the Michigan High School Athletic Association has misunderstood or misapplied the rule ... and then proceeds to tell us (or a court of law) what the rule really says or means.
At such times, we are tempted to quote from the Honorable Frank H. Easterbrook’s Foreword to Reading Law by Antonin Scalia and Bryan A. Garner. Judge Easterbrook, who retired in 2013 from the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, wrote: “The text’s author, not the interpreter, gets to choose how language will be understood and applied.”
The true and intended meaning and application of MHSAA rules and regulations are determined at the time they are adopted by their authors – MHSAA Representative Council and staff – not at the time they are challenged by those who find the meaning and application inconvenient.
For this reason, courts customarily, and correctly, do not intervene ... do not substitute their judgment for that of the authors and administrators of the rules.
The controlling case in Michigan, by the Michigan Court of Appeals in 1986, held that courts are not the proper forum for making or reviewing decisions concerning the eligibility of students in interscholastic athletics.