Logo

Tasks Before Us

May 20, 2014

A year ago the MHSAA convened the first of several task forces that are tackling the kind of complicated topics on which our annual committee meeting process seemed incapable of making sufficient progress.
We assembled a 16-member task force that met four times over six months during 2013 to develop policy proposals to enhance acclimatization and reduce head-to-head contact in football practices. Meeting multiple times, the group could delve more deeply into data and explore emerging trends in both school-based and non-school football. The task force would develop ideas at one meeting, test them with constituents for a few weeks and then tweak the ideas at the next meetings. Task force members had the time to be both philosophical and practical, to think about what would be ideal and then trim that idea to be workable in all sorts and sizes of schools across Michigan.
As a result of this focused, multi-session approach, the Football Practice Proposals sailed smoothly through a vetting process during the winter months, earned the MHSAA Representative Council’s approval in March and will be controlling MHSAA member school football practices this fall.
Meanwhile, we began 2014 with the appointment of another task force to tackle many thorny issues related to junior high/middle schools. Some of the issues are so fundamental that changes in the MHSAA Constitution could be required to change what the MHSAA should be doing with respect to school sports prior to the 9th grade. There is equal chance that the task force could propose some very large changes, or very little change. We don’t prescribe the result, we just provide the forum and facilitation – create focus that has been lacking for too long.
Later this year and during 2015 we see the likelihood that additional task forces will address other tough topics, like out-of-season coaching, redefining what subvarsity means, and possibly address more risk management issues, perhaps in ice hockey and soccer first and then other sports where health and safety questions are raised.

Cheering for Equal Opportunity

February 14, 2017

Guided by the spirit of Title IX, the Michigan High School Athletic Association created girls competitive cheer in 1993 for the express purpose of providing an additional winter sport for girls to equalize athletic opportunities between the sexes. Before that, girls in Michigan had fewer athletic opportunities in the winter than in fall or spring and fewer athletic opportunities than boys overall.

Like all girls sports under MHSAA regulations, participation in MHSAA Girls Competitive Cheer Tournaments has been limited to girls. Since the 1977-78 school year (after a team of four boys won an Illinois High School Association girls state bowling championship), the MHSAA Handbook has included the following rule: “Boys may not participate on a girls team in MHSAA sponsored postseason meets and tournaments.” The MHSAA also encourages member schools not to permit boys to participate on girls teams during regular season play.

Without a policy prohibiting boys from displacing girls from teams and from the playing surface, athletic opportunities for girls would be in serious jeopardy, as many courts examining this issue have concluded. In short, permitting boys to displace girls would be antithetical to the fundamental purpose of Title IX.

The overwhelming majority of federal and state courts have concluded that “no-boys-on-girls-teams” rules are lawful and necessary. These cases conclude that maintaining and promoting athletic opportunities for girls and redressing past discrimination against women in athletics are important objectives. And, second, they conclude that excluding boys from girls’ sports – even if girls may participate on boys’ teams – is substantially related to that important interest.

Case law provides two separate, simple explanations; each of which, standing alone, establishes the legitimacy of the rule. First, having all-girl teams creates or maintains opportunities for females that would not otherwise exist, thereby providing females opportunity to develop programs equal to boys.

Second, because there are recognized, innate physiological differences between the sexes that give boys inherent advantages in most athletic events, to permit boys to participate on girls’ teams – irrespective of the sport – would displace girls from competition to a substantial extent, thereby diminishing female opportunity in athletics.

  • A federal court in a Tennessee case wrote in 1977: “[it] takes little imagination to realize that were play and competition not separated by sex, the great bulk of females would quickly be eliminated from participation and denied any meaningful opportunity for athletic involvement.” 

  • A federal court in Arizona wrote in 1989: “If males are permitted to displace females ... even to the extent of one player ..., the goal of equal participation by females in interscholastic athletics is set back, not advanced.”

The MHSAA created girls competitive cheer expressly to provide overall equal athletic opportunity for girls that did not exist before it was added as an MHSAA sport. That a boy now wishes to participate on a girls competitive cheer team, despite the abundance of athletic opportunities for boys in other sports, does not establish a violation of Title IX. And Title IX has never been so construed. The MHSAA’s rule creates for girls the opportunity to enjoy highly competitive athletic opportunity in the same number of sports as boys – precisely satisfying Title IX.

The MHSAA made its move toward girls competitive cheer two decades before entrepreneurs invented coed “stunt” for schools’ and colleges’ consideration. By that time, participation in girls competitive cheer had tripled in Michigan high schools. Girls competitive cheer is now the eighth-most popularly sponsored high school sport in Michigan, above sports like tennis, golf and swimming & diving which had a 20-year head start.