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System Failure

October 19, 2012

Almost every week we learn of another college or professional athlete who has exploded in rage, abused a fan or friend, been busted or broken parole, been stopped for speeding or DUI.

Among very many reasons why, one of the greatest may be this: we taught them to behave this way . . . the system caused them to become this way.

Sometimes the positive character traits taught through high school sports are overwhelmed by the extravagant attention given to athletes by the media, college recruiters, ranking services, agents, promoters and sporting equipment/apparel companies. Good kids begin to believe the hype, thinking they're not only above the crowd, but above the law. They go from being self-confident, to self-centered, to self-serving. 

There are good reasons that, in school sports, we attempt to restrain the hype and deflect attention from individual to team. We could use some help at home and in the media.

Corporate Care

March 10, 2015

One of the MHSAA’s newest corporate sponsors is arguably one of its most important ever because it will assist the MHSAA’s aspirations to go further beyond the ordinary in promoting student-athlete health and safety.
That new sponsor is Sparrow Health System, and you can read about our new relationship by clicking here.
During the many discussions with Sparrow’s leadership leading up to our partnership, we learned of its membership in the prestigious Mayo Clinic Care Network; and during our review of some of Mayo’s work we reviewed an April 2012 Mayo Clinic article about the risks of concussion in high school football.
The article presented the results of a carefully controlled study of individuals who played high school football in Rochester, Minnesota, during the decade 1946 to 1956.
The conclusion was that those participants did not have an increased risk of later developing dementia, Parkinson’s disease or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) compared to non-football-playing high school males. The study notes that this was the case even though, compared to today, “there was poorer equipment and less regard for concussions and no rules prohibiting head-first tackling (spearing).”
There is no small supply of data that sheds better light on the head trauma hysteria in sports in general and football in particular. We cite such data as a counter-balance, not as a reason to slow the search for safer ways to conduct school sports. Our new sponsorship is evidence that we are increasing our capacity to do much more.