Time for Tough Topics
February 28, 2014
The daily deluge of calls and emails about issues that matter that day tempt us to take our eye off other issues that matter today, tomorrow and for many years. Good service requires that we respond promptly and pleasantly to the daily details, but good leadership requires that we give adequate attention to matters more fundamental to the mission of school-sponsored sports, and more critical to the future of educational athletics.
No matter how many times we’re contacted about today’s programs and problems, we must create our own time to dive deeply into the core philosophies and cornerstone policies of voluntary competitive interscholastic athletics.
We have attempted to do this with the “Four Thrusts for Four Years” campaign to address health and safety issues, especially but far from exclusively focusing on increased acclimatization and decreased head-to-head contact in football practices. The practice proposals of the 2013 Football Task Force – developed over a series of meetings by serious people, appear to have widespread support and should receive an affirmative vote by the Representative Council next month.
Similarly, we have appointed a task force to work throughout 2014 on junior high/middle school issues. Theirs is the difficult challenge of locating the sweet spot – the policies that protect the multi-sport experience in a learning environment for our younger students while still providing more competition, and for younger grades, to attract and hold the interest of junior high/middle school students and their parents who are seeking much more competition much earlier in life than the MHSAA’s current policies allow.
Out-of-season contact by high school coaches with their high school students is another of the topics that is often discussed and occasionally studied, and the rules governing out-of-season coaching are frequently tweaked. The result is a mammoth section of the Handbook that is difficult to read and follow, and invites widespread disrespect. MHSAA staff is conducting a series of two-hour sessions to try to reframe the discussion and present to the membership by next fall a new (and briefer) set of rules and interpretations. The goal will be to respect both the guiding principles of educational athletics as well as society’s changes since the current rules were first developed.
That’s the goal for all of this these tough, timeless topics.
Making a Statement
June 17, 2015
Amid the horrific destruction of Baghdad, the conductor of the Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra, Karim Wasfi, is making a statement. Mr. Wasfi has been carrying a chair and his beloved cello to the exact locations where violence occurs, very shortly after it occurs, and he plays.
With the roar of car bombs still ringing in ears and rubble still smoking, Wasfi plays. He told National Public Radio: “The other side chose to turn every element, every aspect of life in Iraq into a battle zone. I chose to turn every corner of Iraq into a spot for civility, beauty and compassion.”
The response of this single citizen to the catastrophic chaos in his city and country is especially powerful because of the beauty of his music amidst the brutality of civil war; but neither his gift nor the jolting juxtaposition should cause us to miss the message that our response to overwhelming problems could be and should be like his, even if less newsworthy from the perspective of a national radio broadcast. For example ...
- We can wring our hands in despair that the Earth’s increasingly polluted air, land and waters are so far gone and the problem is of such great scale that nothing we could ever do will change things; or, we can choose to turn every corner of our little slice of the physical world into a less polluted place. We can make a statement.
- We can weep over the slaughter of elephants, the leveling of mountains or the razing of forests or jungles by crooks or corporations that cannot see the consequences of their reckless avarice; or, we can choose to make our neighborhoods spots of beauty, conservation and sustainability. A statement.
- We can cry ourselves to sleep over humanity’s inhumanity to those who look, dress or worship differently; or, we can choose to make our little community a welcoming place for refugees where long-suffering and persecuted people can feel safe and hopeful. A statement.
- And we can become frustrated that the values of school sports are so regularly undermined by the excesses of youth, college, professional and international sports that it feels hopeless to hang onto what we believe; or, we can choose to devote ourselves to maintaining our little niche of the sports world as a more principled place ... where scholarship, sportsmanship, safety and a sensible scope are recognizable and reliable core values. A statement.
The great conductor carrying his chair and cello to the rubble is real. It’s also a metaphor which reminds the rest of us of other daunting problems and the opportunity each individual person has to make a meaningful response – a clear statement – where we live, work and play.