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The Student Effect

January 7, 2014

The key to assuring an activity is educational is to consider the effect on the student of every decision made. For example, what is the effect on a student who ...

  • gets cut from the team?
  • never gets in a game?
  • never experiences a win, or never a loss?
  • frequently hears vulgarity or profanity?
  • is taught how not to get caught breaking a rule?

If one student’s participation is at the expense of another student’s self-esteem, whether opponent or teammate, we can’t justify the program. It’s not consistent with the educational mission of schools.

If we ridicule those who fail, or if we lavish too much praise on those who achieve, we can’t justify the program. It’s not educational athletics.

If we direct or pressure students to specialize in only athletics or non-athletic activities, or in just one sport or activity, we can’t justify the program. It’s not educational.

If we miss or misuse the teachable moments of school sports – split seconds of time and circumstance in which to teach values like commitment, discipline, integrity, hard work and teamwork, we can’t justify the program. It’s not educational.

We assure the program is educational when we consider the effect on the student and when we seize the positive purposes of teachable moments that permeate the program.

None of this means we can’t have rules that, when violated, remove the privilege of participation. And none of this means we cannot have teams with both starters and substitutes, and contests that determine wins and losses. It means that there are objectives that go much deeper and outcomes that go much further.

It’s Not Us

October 2, 2015

There are continuing and crescendoing complaints about “AAU ball” – the travel, the competition without preparation, the agents and hangers-on, the sleaze factor. Yet some of those same complainers are critical of the very rules that tend to keep that sleaze at a low level in school sports in Michigan.

If so many people agree that kids and parents are being sold a bill of goods full of empty promises by a growing number of youth sports zealots, recruiting gurus, and both club and college level coaches, then why should we provide passports that would expose more students to this atmosphere?

If so many people feel that what’s happening in youth sports is bad and what’s masquerading as educational athletics in major college sports is baloney, then why should we help high school students earn frequent flier points through relaxation of time-tested travel and television policies?

If so many people believe there are too many athletic-motivated transfers, then why should we throw fuel on the fire? Those schools which could afford it would try to make their programs more attractive with national travel and televised games as a magnet to suck the best players out of neighboring schools that cannot afford the same excesses.

There is more than enough travel and exposure opportunity for schools here in Michigan and Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Ontario and Wisconsin. Any more adds impure emphases and increased expenses to programs that are already overburdened or bankrupt.

When our school administrators and coaches say that national travel and tournaments are unaffordable and “It’s not us,” they mean it. They’ve got their priorities right.