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Travel Bug

November 2, 2012

International trips for U.S. youth sports teams is a big business.  Sometimes the target is school sports teams; and sometimes those schools and communities get foreign travel fever.

While I have nothing against international travel – in fact, it’s a hobby my wife and I enthusiastically share – I caution against international trips for teams or individual athletes.

Sometimes the competition is badly matched.  Sometimes our teams encounter and are routed by another country’s “national team.”  More often, our teams encounter poorly organized events and weak, thrown-together opposing teams and substandard venues.  But that’s not the major concern here.

Several years ago, a Michigan community spent $23,000 to help send 20 baseball players from three of its high schools to participate overseas.  That’s nice, but the school district didn’t have a junior high baseball program; and I wondered if the community fundraising might not have been used to provide new opportunities for more student-athletes.

About the same time, there was an effort to fund one basketball player from each of a league’s schools to compete in an international basketball tournament.  The cost was $2,200 for each student; and again I wondered if those communities might not have uses for the money that could provide benefit to more student-athletes.

Why do we spend thousands on a few when the same amounts of money could restore or expand opportunities for many?  Why do we focus on the fortunate few while the foundations of our programs rot through eliminated junior high programs and pay-for-play senior high programs?

No one can argue that some of these trips do some of our students some good.  But do they offer enough good for the few at a time when many students aren’t being offered even the basic opportunities of interscholastic athletics?

Local leadership should say “No” to requests to support expensive international trips.  There’s need for them to put more into the foundation of our programs and less into foreign travel.

5 Questions for 8-Player Football

April 10, 2017

The 2017 8-Player Football Playoffs will be conducted over four weeks in two divisions of 16 teams each for the 60-plus teams sponsored by Michigan High School Athletic Association Class D schools.

That much was decided by the MHSAA Representative Council on March 24.

There are five questions (at least) that the Council still must answer:

  1. How should teams qualify? Since the first 8-player tournament in 2011, teams have qualified by playoff point averages – the 16 highest qualified for the tournament. Should this be changed to a system of automatic qualifiers on the basis of wins, plus additional qualifiers on the basis of playoff points to complete the field – like the 11-player tournament operates?

  2. When should divisions be determined? Should it be in late March when division breaks for other “equal divisions” tournaments are set? Or should divisions be determined nearer the start of the season – say, September 1 – so all late additions, deletions, and cooperative program changes can be factored in before the two divisions, based on enrollment, are determined?

  3. Where will the championship games be played? Should the Council designate a doubleheader at the Superior Dome in Marquette so the MHSAA can focus all its resources on one climate-controlled facility? Or should two sites be designated now (perhaps the Superior Dome in Marquette and Legacy Field in Greenville), and the specific games and times assigned as the playoffs progress in an attempt to reduce travel times for teams and spectators?

  4. Should the maximum enrollment for the 8-player tournament be the moving target of the Class D maximum (203 in 2017) or a fixed number – for example, 215, the Class D maximum in 2011 when the 8-player tournament began? This decision could be deferred to the Council’s meeting in December.

  5. Should there be a “grace period” for schools that are eligible for the 8-player tournament one year but have enrollments that exceed the 8-player limit the next year – for example, eligible only the following year and only if the enrollment does not exceed the 8-player enrollment limit by more than 12 students? This decision could also be delayed to the December meeting of the Council.

As our excitement builds for the expanded 8-player tournament, so do the questions.